Ray Boulger's Blog
Ray Boulger is widely renowned as the guru of the mortgage industry and expert on the housing market. Ray is constantly called upon by the media to provide informed comment on all areas of the market, and is a regular on the BBC, Sky and ITV.
Last year, Ray was voted guru of the year at the Headlinemoney awards by all of the nation’s money and property journalists. As such, we thought it was high time that you had direct access to him. Ray’s blog will be updated most days so the knowledge just keeps on coming.
07/03/2012 by
Bank of Ireland has today announced a 2 stage increase in its SVR from 2.99% to 4.49%, with a 1% increase in June, followed by a further 0.5% in September. ...
Categories: Bank of England, Mortgages, Personal finance, Interest rates
05/09/2011 by
With new evidence of problems in global economy emerging almost every day now from somewhere in the world (figures from the UK service sector today were much worse than expected by economists, many of whom seem to be pretty...
Categories: Bank of England, Mortgages, Regulation, Interest rates
18/01/2011 by
Today’s inflation figure of CPI 3.7% year on year will provide plenty of copy for the news media but the market’s reaction hardly justifies the Evening Standard headline of “Soaring interest rate on the way.” ...
Categories: Bank of England, Mortgages, Interest rates
29/10/2010 by
Following this week’s third quarter GDP figures one has to consider whether this changes the dynamics of the market enough to take a more positive view about switching to switch to a fixed rate. Just as with Halifax's reported...
Categories: Property market, Bank of England, Mortgages, Regulation, Interest rates
14/09/2010 by
There is a fine line between appropriate and overly onerous regulation and after all the horse trading it is far from clear that the proposed Basel III rules have drawn that line in the right place, although after the huge bail...
Categories: Property market, Bank of England, Mortgages, Regulation
26/08/2010 by
No doubt the reason Andrew Lilico, Chief Economist of Policy Exchange, which calls itself a think tank, chose to issue his paper forecasting Bank Rate would rise to 8% in 2012 this week is that in the August silly season when real...
Categories: Property market, Bank of England, Mortgages, House and home, Interest rates
12/08/2010 by
Gross mortgage lending has fallen 61% from a peak of £362.6bn in 2007 to £142.6bn in 2009 and the 2010 figure is likely to be similar. Net lending has collapsed from £108bn in 2007 to £11.5bn last year, but net lending last year...
Categories: Property market, Bank of England, Mortgages, Personal finance, Regulation, House and home
11/08/2010 by
Gilt yields have fallen sharply today, with the yield on 4 - 10 year gilts lower by around 11 basis points (0.11%). This follows yesterday evening's statement by the Fed and today's Quarterly Inflation Report from the Bank of...
Categories: Mortgages, Property market, Bank of England, Regulation, Interest rates
22/06/2010 by
One of the opening comments in George Osborne’s Budget speech was that he was “not going to hide hard choices from the British people or bury them in the small print of the Budget documents.” He added “You’re going to hear them...
Categories: Property market, Bank of England, Buy to let, Mortgages, Interest rates
04/06/2010 by
Nationwide announced its May house price index yesterday, followed by Halifax today, and there are major divergences, which is worrying, as broadly the two indices are designed to measure the same thing over the same area (the...
Categories: Property market, Bank of England
The blog postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the authors and do not neccessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of Charcol Limited. All comments are made in good faith, and neither Charcol Limited nor Ray Boulger will accept liability for them.