After the scales were tipped in favour of landlords years ago they are being tipped back again. I have no objection to a landlord owning property and renting it out but why should they have a mortgage on it when that mortgage could have gone to a first time buyer (like myself in 1986 when I was able to buy a two year old two bed house for 3x my junior engineers salary)

Posted by tenyearstogetmymoneyback @ 04:58 PM 6 Comments

Between them, Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, HSBC and Standard Chartered, were expected to pay a total of £15.6bn to shareholders, according to analysis from investment firm AJ Bell.

Key take aways: New Residential, which has seen its stock sink more than 65% this year, has a market value of about $2.2 billion cut its quarterly dividend 90% to preserve liquidity. While the Federal Reserve is buying up mortgage debt, the effort is focused on securities consisting of so-called agency loans that were created with help from the federal government -- different from New Residential’s non-agency debt. “Conditions created by the Covid-19 pandemic have greatly impacted the mortgage REIT industry, The company said its book value has declined about 25% to 30% since the end of last year.

Another article about how Coronavirus is affecting the Mortgage Market. Savers are just as badly affected. I have a YBS Regular savings account which matures in about a fortnight and can't see anything remotely interesting on their website. Surprisingly NS&I is actually better than most building societies at present.

With about a quarter of the world in lockdown, the order to stay at home has taken on a new dimension for one of Britain’s favorite pastimes - Property

The government has asked that viewings cease apart from virtual ones. Interestingly the FT said this followed a plea by banks and the disappearance of new mortgage finance. On Rightmove I had noticed that the listings were generally either new or reduced in the last 2 months. In other words, HPC in process. Is this really a response to COVID-19 or the ultimate attempt to shore up prices, removing sellers so that they don't become the overpopulated side of the market. If virtual viewings continue, will prices nonetheless continue to slide? Legal processing of sales may also have stopped - in which case I guess both sides have been frozen?

Posted by nickb @ 10:16 AM 7 Comments

As I posted below the BoE have run out of their traditional responses. This article considers the alternatives now available.