Q102 Drive at 5 features Irish Mortgage Brokers, Wednesday 26th April

Scott and Venetia had us on their show to discuss the property market and to go through some of the things that are affecting it.

They also found out how much he paid for his last haircut and a few other unusual things that you don’t normally hear on radio!

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Central Bank rule changes discussed on Today FM’s ‘The Last Word’

We were part of a panel discussion with Matt Cooper on the ‘The Last Word’ the day the Central Bank rule changes were announced.

The panel consisted of Charlie Weston from the Irish Independent, Brendan Burgess from AskAboutMoney.com and Karl Deeter of Irish Mortgage Brokers.

There were differing views where the for/against was clearly laid out and the concerns about whether it’s a good idea.

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Banks are lending (while standards tighten)

I often complain that banks are ‘not lending’, they say this isn’t true. The Central Bank then says that lending criteria is tightening (report here). This at first seems to support the first statement, but could it be that they are lending and reining in on underwriting criteria at the same time?

It could be, AIB stated that they wanted to lend €800m this year (that was said at the end of 2011 at an in house conference), they are on track to lend €1,050m which is about 25% higher than previously expected. Bank of Ireland/ICS are saying the same thing, at the same time, the main lenders have jacked up rates and made more conservative estimations of who does or doesn’t get loans.

With the fall out in lending from 06/07′ to now, it means that there are plenty of borrowers of a high quality who are seeking finance, when you raise interest rates the stress-testing gets harder to pass, so that cuts out a lot of borrowers, as …

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Retarded banking policies

Banks allowed their commercial teams to make a really big mess which the nation now has to clean up, the mess wasn’t on the residential loan book (although it may be in the future), it was primarily on the commercial/development book and those are the loans that NAMA will be taking.

So one might think… ‘at last, the bad stuff is out of the way’ and it is for the most part, at least from a ‘toxic asset’ point of view, what isn’t out of the way is the continued lack of foresight that major banks in this country seem to have.

I ask: ‘Did you know property prices have fallen significantly?’. ‘No I didn’t’ said the martian who just rode in on a moonbeam and landed in my office, but other than him, everybody knows the craic, house prices are down everywhere to varying degrees, and that means prices are lower than they used to be.

So why are some banks refusing to look at mortgages where the actual value of the property is …

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