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TwentyOneEleven

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Everything posted by TwentyOneEleven

  1. Just caught a glimpse of tomorrow's front pages on Sky News and I'm sure this is on the front page of The Telegraph under the heading of "Bank Pulls Out Of Mortgage Market" (or something like that?). No link on Telegraph website as yet, and can't tune into news channel again until OH has finished watching "Bionic Woman" (wtf ... how do you go from Albert Square to being bionic?) on ITV2+1!!!
  2. It's not, but cut they probably will! Won't make any difference though, as noted on many other threads in recent days/weeks, the banks will move their interest rates however they see fit regardless of what the BOE base rate is ... and for many recently that has meant an increase rather a reduction! With HPI just 1.1% YOY now, we should see negative YOY HPI within the next couple of months ... 'Spring Bounce' notwithstanding!
  3. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle3637380.ece
  4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Cramer
  5. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle3613688.ece The Times March 25, 2008 Borrowers shopping for mortgages shun high fees of short-term deals Grainne Gilmore, Economics Correspondent Two-year fixed-rate mortgage deals are losing popularity as the rising cost of mortgages means that even the most creditworthy of borrowers will have to pay thousands extra to renew. Figures calculated for The Times show that a borrower who has 25 per cent equity in their home and a £150,000 mortgage with Halifax will pay more than £3,300 extra over two years if they choose the lowest-rate two-year fix available from the lender today. Rising interest rates and a tightening of mortgage deals — a byproduct of the credit crunch — mean that all banks are offering less generous deals. Borrowers at Cheltenham & Gloucester will pay more than £3,400 extra for a new two-year fix. Experts say that this is prompting many of the 1.4 million homeowners coming to the end of fixed-rate deals this year to look at longer fixes or tracker loans that move in line with the base rate. Ray Boulger, of John Charcol, the mortgage broker, said: “Two-year fixes will be less popular as arguments for not taking one out outweigh those in favour. People will want to wait until the credit crunch subsides and interest rates fall further.” Mortgage lenders, who have been able to secure funding only at high rates of interest in the wake of the credit crunch, have been passing rate rises on to borrowers in an effort to protect their margins. In addition, mortgage arrangement fees have risen sharply. Two years ago, it cost about £400 to set up a two-year fixed-rate deal. Now an arrangement fee of £1,000 or more is not unusual. First Direct offers a two-year fix at 4.75 per cent, but the fee is £1,498. Alliance & Leicester's two-year fix pegged at 4.99 per cent has an arrangement fee of 2 per cent of the mortgage. A homeowner with a home loan of £320,000 will pay a fee of £6,400. A record proportion of borrowers took out tracker deals in January, according to the most recent figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders. A third of mortgage deals were trackers, the highest figure since the CML started to compile tracker data in 2005. The number of fixed-rate deals slumped to 57 per cent, down from 64 per cent in December. This is the lowest rate since June 2005. David Hollingworth, of London & Country, the mortgage broker, said: “Longer-term mortgages are potentially a viable solution, and we could see the popularity of two-year fixes wane.” Arrangement fees and interest rates on three and five-year fixed-rate deals are often similar to two-year deals. Louise Cuming, of Moneysupermarket.com, the online price comparison service that compiled the figures, said: “Five-year fixed rates are becoming a lot more popular. This tends to be a good compromise, as borrowers are not tied in for too long.” Mr Hollingworth said: “Lenders may also start to concentrate on the three to five-year fixed-rate market to bring in longer-term business.” Borrowers are also looking at tracker deals, since the indications are that the base rate will fall this year. Jonathan Cornell, managing director of Hamptons Mortgages, a mortgage broker, said: “For the forseeable future, the base rate is only going one way, and that's down.” Mr Cornell said that tracker deals had also become more expensive after the liquidity crisis. Halifax has increased the rate on its two-year tracker deal by 0.2 percentage points twice in the past two weeks. “All deals look very expensive at the moment compared to the past five years,” Mr Cornell said. Borrowers may be better off opting for a deal with a wait-and-see option, rather than allowing their deal to revert to their lender's expensive standard variable rate.
  6. Does anybody know if there's anything like this for IE, or do you have to use FF?
  7. Good summary of these figures in The Times... http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle3607483.ece And I especially liked this line... Now what was that saying again? Oh yes... "Chasing the market down"!
  8. I'm sure I saw a cartoon-style spoof of one of these ads on E4 once, but have never been able to find it online anywhere. EDIT: This wasn't it, but another one they've done, and quite funny (especially the old dear in her undies!) ... Love the sharks at the end too!
  9. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle3607772.ece From The Times March 24, 2008 Lender Picture Financial faces sale for 1p as credit crisis deepens Miles Costello A former Apax-owned Welsh consumer finance group with a £1.2 billion loans book is poised to be sold within the next seven to ten days to an unnamed rival private equity firm for as little as 1p. Picture Financial, owned for the past year by management, was forced to put itself up for sale last year after Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank refused to provide further financing in the wake of the credit crunch. An archetypal victim of the seizure in credit markets, Picture faced a funding squeeze from its lending banks as the threat of a recession made the loans on its own books appear riskier. It specialises in providing unsecured credit, which tends to be used to buy cars and pay off other loans. Picture Financial suspended further lending last week while the sale went into its final stages. It declined to comment on the sale process yesterday. Apax, the private equity group and former owner of Picture, did not return calls seeking comment on whether it faced any residual exposure to Picture. It is understood that Kinmont, a boutique advisory firm, has been working on the sale. Talks have been held with WL Ross, the distressed debt specialist, and Cerberus, the private equity group, sources said. While relatively small as a consumer lender, Picture Financial operates a well-known brand. As well as mounting a television advertising campaign, the firm was personally endorsed by Peter Hain, the former Work and Pensions Secretary. Mr Hain was forced to resign after it emerged that he had failed to disclose £103,000 in political donations made while he was fighting to become the Labour Party's deputy leader. Picture, whose chief executive Neville Allport is an admirer of Mr Hain, made a £5,000 political donation to the former minister to back his campaign. Its loan was disclosed to the appropriate parliamentary authorities. High street lenders have become more concerned about their exposure to bad debts as the credit crunch takes its toll on borrowers. The Times revealed on Saturday that the number of banks seeking to secure credit card debts, personal loans and other unsecured debts against their customers' property surged by 580percent between 2000 and 2006.
  10. http://www.advfn.com/news_Feds-moves-bring...y_25409250.html
  11. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle3602070.ece
  12. http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKL2240948020080322
  13. Since when is emphasising the title of an article being hysterical? Not sure I've ever heard of "Capital Font" before ... is that something new in Office 2007?
  14. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7307275.stm Mortgage criteria getting tighter Consumers are finding it tougher to get a mortgage as cautious lenders continue to withdraw and change deals. Financial information service Moneyfacts said a string of lenders had tightened up their criteria over the last two days. With lenders' funds drying up, higher deposits are being demanded from first-time buyers. Several small building societies have been restricting or halting lending as a result of the financial turmoil. Latest changes The Co-operative Bank has become the latest lender to demand a higher deposit by cutting its maximum loan-to-value ratio from 95% to 90% in recent days. Bigger lenders, such as the Halifax and the Woolwich, have slightly increased the interest rates on certain tracker or fixed-rate deals, while making other deals available only to those able to put down a 40% deposit. The Cheltenham & Gloucester, part of Lloyds TSB, has also raised the interest rate charged on some deals. It said it was doing this to "manage" the high volume of demand for its mortgages, caused by some rivals reining in their own lending. Meanwhile, the market for sub-prime or other specialist mortgages continues to contract, with the West Bromwich Building Society, Mortgage Express and Nationwide replacing some of their existing ranges with new deals demanding a bigger deposit or higher interest rates. For instance, the Mortgage Works - a subsidiary of Nationwide, the UK's second-biggest mortgage lender, followed many others in withdrawing from the 100% mortgage market on Friday. Future deals Smaller building societies are feeling the knock-on effect of banks tightening their criteria. As a result, they are withdrawing deals instead of being swamped by demand. More than a million fixed-rate deals, typically lasting for two years, are due to expire in 2008, which will add to demand. Those wishing to move house are being told to act fast on mortgage deals. Ray Boulger, from mortgage broker John Charcol, said: "Those wanting to move might find a mortgage they could have got six months ago, even a month ago, is no longer available to them." He added that lenders were changing their deals frequently, sometimes several times a week.
  15. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle3587207.ece
  16. http://www.advfn.com/news_Citigroup-announ...a_25323205.html Date : 17/03/2008 @ 20:15 Source : TFN Citigroup announces layoff in Iowa DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - The home mortgage division of Citigroup Inc. said Monday it is laying off 185 employees who worked in its home equity business, saying those types of loans are not salable in today's troubled home loan market. CitiMortgage spokesman Mark Rodgers said the layoffs in the Des Moines area follow the company's recent announcement that it plans to better allocate its capital. "Supporting that goal, CitiMortgage recently announced it will reduce its overall balance sheet and the percentage of first mortgage originations held in portfolio by focusing more on salable product," he said in a statement. "Because home equity products are not salable in the current market, or likely to be in the foreseeable future, we are curtailing proactive marketing efforts that drive home equity loan volume." He said the company is not exiting the home equity business but will focus more on supporting existing Citibank, corporate and Smith Barney customers. Citigroup continues to employ about 180 people in its CitiMortgage business in Des Moines, about 650 workers in its credit card operations in the state and CitiFinancial has 120 workers in Iowa. About 200 workers are employed by Smith Barney in the state, he said. Earlier this month Citigroup announced plans to reduce residential mortgage assets in the United States by about $45 billion over the next year. That would be cutting by more than 50 percent the amount of new loans held in portfolio.
  17. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/worl...icle3568529.ece Times Online March 17, 2008 For sale: my house, my friends, my life Philippe Naughton After splitting up from his wife, Ian Usher realised that life had lost some of its charm. So he decided to sell it on eBay. All of it. His entire life. Not just the airy, open-plan three-bedroomed house and the ageing Mazda 929, but the motorbike and the jetski and the bicycle and the furniture and the bed linen. And the friends. The successful bidder will even get a two-week trial in Mr Usher's job at a rug shop in Perth, Western Australia. The sunshine and beach lifestyle will be thrown in for free. "My whole life is for sale. Everything," Mr Usher writes on www.alife4sale.co, a website he has set up to publicise his auction, which he insists is entirely genuine. "When I say everything is included in the sale I mean EVERYTHING is included! Upon completion and settlement I will walk out of my home for the last time in just the clothes I am wearing, and carrying only my wallet and passport." Mr Usher, 44, was born in Darlington, brought up in northeast England and emigrated to Australia from Scarborough in 2001 with his wife Laura after a varied career that included hiring jet skis, selling cars and training up young workers for British Rail. He gained Australian citizenship in 2006 but split from his wife last year after five years of marriage and started to wonder whether it was time to move on. Mr Usher's website is counting down the 100 days until he puts his life up on eBay in a 7-day auction on June 22 at a starting price of A$1 – about 46p. Mr Usher says his airy open-plan house, in sunny Wellard a 30-minute train ride from Perth, is worth at least A$400,000 so he hopes to collect at least A$500,000 to fund the next phase of his life. "I have a great life," Mr Usher writes. "I live in a nice house in a beautiful area of a fantastic city, in one of the most amazing countries in the world. "I have a car, a motorbike, a jet ski, spa, and much more. I live a great lifestyle; I go skydiving, snowboarding, diving, jet skiing, kite boarding. I have some great friends. I have a good job working with some wonderful people." So why sell it? "Well, my tale is a bit of a sad one, but I am not trying to sell you a sob story," he says. "I appreciate that many people have had to cope with much more than I have, and have had much more sadness in their lives. This is just my way of dealing with what has happened to me. "I met and married the best girl in the world. I loved her with all my heart, and she loved me back too. However, after over 12 years together and five years of fantastic married happiness, I was hit with a bolt from the blue." He does not go into details about the split, preferring to look ahead to the future. "My current thoughts are to then head to the airport, and ask at the flight desk where the next flight with an available seat goes to, and to get on that and see where life takes me from there," he says.
  18. Perhaps the OP was an English teacher ... their spelling might explain their redundancy? The Great British education system, eh?
  19. http://www.advfn.com/news_US-stocks-head-f...n_25159534.html
  20. Yes, sorry, I meant it from the borrowers' point-of-view rather than the lender's. People are forced to borrow at higher rates of interest, therefore more debt, etc.
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