Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Barclays cuts rates on ‘Great Escape’ range
Barclays slashes rates for homebuyers and remortgagers
Barclays has announced that it will be making a series of rate cuts and improvements to its residential mortgages to encourage more families to get onto or climb further up the property ladder.
Posted by ben @ 12:14 PM (2141 views)
18 thoughts on “Barclays cuts rates on ‘Great Escape’ range”
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mark wadsworth says:
Excellent news.
So people not on the ladder can get on the bottom rung, people on the bottom rung can move up a rung etc, all the way up to the bloke second from the top who can move to the top rung.
Now, can some Homey out there please remind me where the bloke who was previously on the top rung goes? Does he get chucked off the ladder and start again?
flashman says:
Take your pick: dies, downsizes, goes into care, emigrates, divorces, goes bankrupt, moves into a previously vacant house, moves into a newly built house
mark wadsworth says:
Thanks, Flash. Always good to get the Homey perspective.
So assuming that he would have died, downsized, gone into care anyway, with or without Barclays’ super duper whizz bang mortgages, wouldn’t exactly the same shuffling have happened?
So what enables the shuffling up and down is somebody dying etc (or a new house being built) and not the actions of Barclays.
libertas says:
That is odd. It suggests that demand for mortgages is low. They would not raise rates if demand was high. What exactly is going on? Or is it not demand, but rather a drive towards improving capital balance sheets? If so, there could be some serious problems, aka Northern Rock and Co-Op around the corner?
Banks reduce rates into weakness, increase them into strength. This does not look good.
Does anybody have any insight into what is really going on here?
flashman says:
@ 3 Not really. Their thinking is that without these super duper whizz bang mortgages (sdwbm), the available houses might be snapped up by BTL types instead of families.
If you are perplexed by anything else just light up the SuperHomey beacon and I’ll answer you in a flash.
Now it could be said that without sdwbm, prices might fall and there would be no need for sdwbm but you never asked that, so I won’t expand
@4 Yes I do have the insight you seek but you might be mad, so I’d better not answer
mark wadsworth says:
Flash, OK, fair enough, without sdwbm, the evil BTLs would snap them up. I accept that in Homey folklore, prices are fixed and the government has to “help” people buy homes by underwriting their mortgages. Fair enough.
Now, another bit of Homey folklore baffles me is this…
Tenants (or being a tenant) are/is bad because they own no land.
And owner-occupiers are good because they own some land.
So, they then extrapolate this to say that IF no land = bad, AND some land = good THEN lots of land = even better.
But the people who own “lots of land” are known as BTLs, and for every home a BTL owns, there must be one tenant.
So while they applaud the BTLs for owning so much land, they never curse them for creating this phenomenon known as “tenants”.
Can you explain this apparent contradiction? It’s like looking down on junkies as useless scum but applauding the business acument of drug smugglers and drug dealers.
stuartking says:
The Government’s only interested in increasing the debt pile on ordinary working people, to please their chums in the City and at Wonga, and they don’t care how they do it, whether it is by introducing the bedroom tax or encouraging people in unsecure, poorly paid jobs to take out mortgages they won’t be able to pay back. Barclays and other lenders are only dancing to Osborne’s tune, knowing that when it all goes mammaries up, the bankers responsible will retire to spend more time the bonuses and the politicians who are cheering on this nonsense will wander through the revolving door into well-paid City jobs.
How much longer before interest-only liar loans are back in fashion?
flashman says:
@6
Homeowners (17 million) and people who aspire to be homeowners (5 million) naturally want to protect their home ownership privileges.
They therefore tend to vote for parties than promise to protect their homeownership privileges.
Tenants are also able to vote and this appals some homeowners because these folks might well be predisposed to vote for a party who promises to redistribute the privileges that currently accrue to homeowners.
Homeowners therefore fear non-homeowners. Humans being humans, this fear manifests as condescension and loathing
To answer the last part of your question: Homeowners do not think that BTLers are responsible for creating tenants. They think that it is the other way around. They think that tenants create themselves by being workshy and generally useless. They therefore conclude that it is the tenants innate inability to buy houses that creates the market vacuum that sucks in BTLers
Do you think your party might pay me as a consultant? It’s important to understand what makes the enemy tick
Fidds says:
perhaps they realise btl’s will be more likely to throw in the towel if things do go pear shaped… In the 90s it amazed me how many people poughed on with severe neg equity becasue it was their home they didnt want to leave. Whereas landlords all went bust as the renters moved in on the housing from those who couldn’t make ends meet….. Barcleys may be diversifting their portfolio, spreading the risk etc
hpwatcher says:
Oh flashy – I was wondering what had happened to you. Welcome back.
mark wadsworth says:
Flash, thanks for revealing yet another layer of Homey contradiction.
“They think that tenants create themselves by being workshy and generally useless. They therefore conclude that it is the tenants innate inability to buy houses that creates the market vacuum that sucks in BTLers”
That’s a viewpoint, I suppose, but how do you square it with your earlier statement that:
“Their thinking is that without these super duper whizz bang mortgages (sdwbm), the available houses might be snapped up by BTL types instead of [families who are currently tenants].”
Either those tenants are lazy sods who only have themselves to blame, or those tenants are mad keen and hard working and deserve a bit of taxpayer “help”. It can’t be both.
Or by some feat of illogic and self-delusion, is it possible to believe that the lazy tenants create a market which sucks in both BTLs and “hard working families who deserve a leg-up”?
flashman says:
@10
No contradiction. I can square those statements. The sdwbm are aimed at the previously mentioned 5 million people who aspire to be homeowners*. These people are honorary homeowners and can be relied on to support the privileges currently accruing to homeowners
*These 5 million people are officially recognised and claimed by the HomeOwners Alliance (see home page)
http://hoa.org.uk/
dill says:
@ libertas “what is really going on here?”
The clue is in the title of the offering – the ‘Great Escape’.
Consider, for a moment, that the lender is referring to themselves and not the borrower.
hpwatcher says:
Consider, for a moment, that the lender is referring to themselves and not the borrower.
But would not dumping the mortgages be the great escape?
mark wadsworth says:
Flash, Ok, you’re doing well so far, skipping from contradiction to inconsistency, so the Homey distinguish between Wannabe Homeowners and Lazy Feckless Tenants.
So that gets us back to the first problem, how do the Homeys reconcile their overriding urge to restrict the number of houses with their desire to “help” the wannabes while looking up to the BTLs as “wise investors”?
Or is the answer that things like Help To Sell are just and fair compensation for the BTLs for nobly relinquishing their surplus homes and generously passing them to the Wannabes?
hpwatcher says:
I reckon someone has swiped flashman’s login details.
flashman says:
OK, I’ve played along with this homey stuff long enough.
I’ll bow out by giving the insight requested earlier. This press release/article is not about ‘homeys’ or about imminent collapse or any other weird and wonderful dark dealings.
The credit/mortgage markets are thawing and consequently Barclays have decided that it’s time to compete for market share. That’s all there is to it.
dill says:
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/markets/Pages/FLS/data.aspx