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.
13/07/2010 by
Below is today’s press release from the FSA on its proposed changes to the mortgage market, followed by an amended version of what I think it meant to say but was too shy to do so: ...
Categories: Property market, Buy to let, Mortgages, Regulation
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
01/12/2009 by
Yorkshire Building Society has announced it is in “advanced talks” to takeover, sorry, merge with, Chelsea Building Society. This is not yet a done deal and the statement was no doubt rushed out as a result of a leak reported by...
Categories: Buy to let, Mortgages, Regulation, Miscellaneous
26/10/2009 by
The announcement this afternoon that Barclays are acquiring Standard Life Bank is sad news for consumers, not because of anything negative about Barclays but because it means that one of the dwindling number of brands still active...
Categories: Buy to let, Mortgages
21/10/2009 by
Following on from my blog post on Monday on the MMR I note that less than 24 hours after post the FSA have amended the figure I queried for the increase in property prices over the 10 years to the onset of the credit crunch from...
Categories: Buy to let, Mortgages, Personal finance, Regulation, Interest rates, HIPs
05/10/2009 by
Following on quickly from the significant improvement (reported in the previous blog post) to Woolwich’s lifetime tracker rate Northern Rock are also getting in on the act with several good improvements to its product range from...
Categories: Buy to let, Mortgages, Interest rates
07/07/2009 by
This morning the Treasury Select Committee took evidence on "Mortgage arrears and access to mortgage finance" from, among others, Jon Pain, FSA Managing Director of Retail Markets. He told the committee the market for specialist...
Categories: Buy to let, Mortgages, Regulation
28/05/2009 by
The logic of Santander’s announcement to rebrand all their UK branches (Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley) as Santander is obvious and when the integration has been completed will have clear benefits for those...
Categories: Buy to let, Mortgages, Miscellaneous
06/04/2009 by
Nationwide’s House Price Index has traditionally been less volatile than Halifax’s and so it was particularly encouraging when Nationwide reported a 0.9% increase in house prices in March. However, the real figures are even better...
Categories: Property market, Bank of England, Buy to let, Mortgages
12/12/2008 by
Tomorrow’s FT Money Section has an article headed “Borrowers refused best rates,” focusing on good quality clients being turned down for stupid reasons, a problem which is escalating. Brief details of a couple of examples I gave...
Categories: Buy to let, Mortgages, Regulation
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.