Irish Mortgage Brokers Blog

If you go into arrears on your mortgage or you talk to your lender because you believe you are a ‘pre-arrears’ candidate then you will be asked to fill in a ‘Standard Financial Statement‘ or SFS which is part of the Mortgage Arrears Resolution Process (MARP) which started last year.

Engaging with the lender is a key tenet of this and filling in the SFS and liaising with the lender on aspects of it. The information in this is what will be used to negotiate the repayment that you will pay in cases where lifestyle adjustment does not allow you to make the full payment.

We were talking about health insurance, car insurance and credit unions this month on TV3’s personal finance slot. On health insurance in particular we highlighted that you don’t have to go from ‘having cover’ to having zero cover, instead you could opt for the likes of the Hospital Saturday Fund which is a cash plan (pays out on health related spending but isn’t like regular insurance).

Car insurance was also a topic - the new EU ruling will make it illegal to rate men and women differently based on their sex alone from 21st December this year.

Credit Unions were (and are) in the news because of problems they are having. We’ll be back with TV3 next month for more!

This is the usual update of rates available at the moment. As you’ll notice, AIB is the leader in almost every section. However, they are not necessarily lending to every client hoping to obtain finance with them - to know if they’ll be the lender of choice you need to construct the application in a manner that will ensure it shows the best aspects of the case to them.

There are lots of other lenders out there too (we deal with the pillar banks and many others as well), so looking at ‘best rate’ is perhaps different than ‘best attainable rate’.

Anyway, here is the list, if you ever want mortgage advice give us a call! 016790990

Best variable rate mortgage: AIB 3.24% (with one for 2.84% < 50% LTV)

Best 1yr fixed rate mortgage: AIB 4.15%

Best 2yr fixed rate mortgage: PTsb 3.1% < 50% LTV, otherwise AIB 4.65%

Best 3yr fixed rate mortgage: AIB 4.88%

Best 5yr fixed rate mortgage: PTsb 3.7% < 50% LTV, otherwise its AIB 5.35%

Best 10yr fixed rate mortgage: n/A 12/2011

Oh, one final thing, AIB called everybody into a meeting at their head office about two weeks ago, the resounding message was that they are going to be lending more in 2012 but prudence will remain and prices will change (upwards to more comparable market rates).

Yesterday the Examiner broke a story about tracker mortgage holders potentially missing out because they are not reading their terms and conditions. This is an issue we have seen first hand in our company, but it wasn’t due to not reading the terms and conditions, it was down to a bank error.

Recently Bank of Ireland had to put 2,000 accounts back on trackers after they mistakenly took them off and onto variable rates. AIB made the same mistake 214 times and PTsb did it 53 times.

In our own brokerages case we saw something similar recently with PTsb, they insisted to a client that no tracker was available. Then, only after the client remortgaged did they admit their error and offer it back. We represented the client in this case and insisted that all costs were also covered in reinstating the mortgage. This means paying solicitor fees, losses on clawbacks, breakage fees for the fixed rate undertaken etc.

Where this happens has tended to be where people come off of fixed rates and in their ‘rate choice letter’ (a letter you get c. 60-90 days before fixed rate expiration) the tracker is not mentioned. Several banks have made this error and thankfully it is becoming more rare as internal audits have identified and remedied the problem in many cases.

Our advice is (as per interview with Newstalk today) to write a short letter if you are coming off a fixed rate to your lender and ask ‘is a tracker available, if not then please point out the clause that indicates this and why’. This should at least ensure that your loan gets a diligent ‘once over’ by the lender who should be able to tell without doubt what the situation is once they go through your paperwork.

In this piece we were speaking to Sybil & Martin about the banks passing on rate cuts and what to do if you got flooded recently.

In this piece by Stephen Murphy of TV3 we spoke about the issue of Regulators enforcing pricing and the fact that it is not a common practice.

This piece by Claire Brock of TV3 was about Mario Draghi’s unexpected rate cut of 0.25% last Thursday.

The debate about whether or not it will be passed on still rages. We spoke about that particular issue the following day on both LMFM and Newstalk.

I hope you enjoyed the first round of economic history from 2008 to 2011, I think it is time for round 2.

Alan Greenspan was on CNBC last week and his interview is a very interesting take on Europe - which happens to be the first thing he looks at every day (European Bond Markets). Meanwhile Lloyds are reporting that the risk of a 2nd recession in the UK are higher at c. 25-30%.

Greece is the crisis that just keeps giving, The Telegraph has the usual Eurosceptic line but it isn’t about being smug any more. The Greek referendum call of recent days came out of left field and while it may never actually occur the political optics show that the Aegean issues are far from solved, along with the replacement of military officials (the interpretation being the fear of a coup).

And German joblessness is higher for the first time in 2 years, standing now at 7%. The rate of inflation in Germany is currently 2.6% (HICP at 2.86%), having remained over 2% since January 2011. The issue with that (and unemployment that wasn’t growing) is that it lead to a ‘Goldilocks delusion’ where not cutting rates and fiscally conservative policy was considered best. It seems now that Germany has not decoupled from the rest of Europe.

Growing resentment about profligate EU members along with some fear inducing inflation as well as rising unemployment make for a very grumpy Germany, it does not bide well for negotiations. Perhaps hindsight will equally not bide well for the Germany that handled the Great Recession so well (from an employment perspective) either?

Of course at home here in Ireland we are about to pay €700,000,000.00 to speculative/junk rated bond holders who in any normal circumstances would be jumping for joy at a 50% haircut. Politicians are walking out of the Dail due to the lack of discussion, and bingo halls being raided by cops [irrelevant but a sign of the times!].

The Central Bank of Italy (Banca d’Italia) €-Coin ‘one figure for all European GDP’ statistic is also showing a sharp down-trend at present, negative for the first time since September 2009. Italy, with the worlds 3rd largest debtor at €1.9 trillion Euro, and winner of ’scary chart of the day’ almost every day regarding their bond spreads v.s Germany.

I don’t know of any model that can capture and create metrics out of the information flying around at present. There are interesting twitter based investment tools that use crowd sourced information to imply the trajectory of the markets, but I’m not privy to being under the hood on those.

What I am trying to say is that all of this news doesn’t paint a pretty vista, and in this analysts opinion the October/November 2011 period will be another big turning point or cusp. I last made a call like this in January of 2008 (and while it seemed grim at the time it was understated in retrospect), and during that time I went entirely to cash and advised all of our private clients to do the same until late 08′ early 09′.

Today I am repeating that call - to stay out of the markets for a while and see what comes of this all. You might miss out on the Spring 09′ moment, but you won’t face the burn on the road that gets you there. The news flow is simply too negative at present for confidence to go any other way than down, capital preservation remains key.

Until Central Banks step up to the plate (and it our long held belief that they must and will -they are already our lifeline) with the multi-trillion multi-lateral approach there is no reason to do anything other than earn interest.

We were delighted to speak to RTE News at 6 about the state of the personal insolvency in Ireland. Our core belief is that we need some kind of ‘personal examinership’ programme. The piece was covered by reporter Paul Colgan.