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.
08/04/2013 by
As far as the housing market is concerned, Right to Buy was Margaret Thatcher’s major specific legacy. This fuelled a substantial increase in the proportion of people who aspired to, and became, owner occupiers and that increase...
Categories: Property market, Mortgages, House and home, Miscellaneous, Remortgaging
15/02/2013 by
This week’s Quarterly Inflation Report from the Bank of England added little in terms of inflation expectations to the statement issued by The Bank on Thursday last week. However, it did provide considerable meat on the bone and...
Categories: Property market, Bank of England, Mortgages, Personal finance, House and home, Interest rates, Commercial, Buy to let
13/07/2012 by
With today’s announcement from The Bank of England giving further details of the Funding for Lending scheme, which was originally outlined by The Governor and The Chancellor at The Mansion House on 14 June, it is now possible to...
Categories: Bank of England, Mortgages, House and home, Interest rates, Remortgaging
31/05/2012 by
John Charcol can’t claim to have been providing mortgage advice over the whole of the last 60 years but, having been formed in 1974, we believe that John Charcol is the longest established mortgage broker in the UK.
House Price...
Categories: Property market, Bank of England, Buy to let, Mortgages, Personal finance, Regulation, House and home, Miscellaneous, Remortgaging, Moving Home
02/08/2011 by
The Euro ticking time bomb
Categories: Property market, Mortgages, House and home, Interest rates, Remortgaging
23/11/2010 by
Today’s joint press release from Shelter and the CAB entitled “Reckless lending must be stamped out now,” which refers to their joint letter to Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, in response to the FSA’s Responsible Lending...
Categories: Property market, Mortgages, Regulation, House and home
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
07/06/2010 by
In his speech today Prime Minister David Cameron warned of "difficult decisions" on pay, pensions and benefits, set out the reasons for the "painful" cuts ahead and said that dealing with the deficit would be "unavoidably tough"...
Categories: Personal finance, House and home, Miscellaneous
22/01/2010 by
To promote lower rates from today on a third of its 2 year fixes (those with a maximum LTV of 80%) Santander has put out a press release headlined “Demand for tracker deals plummets as homeowners look to make fixed rate hay while...
Categories: Mortgages, House and home, Interest rates
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.