Mortgage to rent in as bad a shape as the mortgage market

I think Ciaran Lynch hit the nail on the head when he said the ‘mortgage to rent’ scheme risks ‘becoming a flop‘. The issue here comes down to the creditors treatment of borrowers.

We have already posted a letter from Pepper showing how they are willing to do write-downs for customers. This is there for anybody to see, it isn’t here-say or rumour. In that case the loans of GE Money (a sub-prime lender) were sold to another company at a big loss.

The buyer of the loan buys it for say, 36c on the Euro meaning a loan for €100,000 is purchased for €36,000. What happens next is that they write to the borrower and say ‘hey borrower, if you pay me €50,000 and make all of your payments then we’ll call it quits’.  Meaning the borrower gets a €50,000 debt write off for either paying their loan or selling up.

This is a strong incentive to do the right thing, and it …

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To buy or not to buy…

We are constantly asked ‘is now a good time to buy’ and the answer as always is ‘that depends’. It depends on what you are hoping for, if you want to invest in an asset that will never lose value then no, it’s a terrible time to buy a house. If you want to buy a home because you are at a point in your life where that is what you want to do then it’s a decent time.

We were telling people from 07′ until this year to stay away from property, and now we believe that the time has come where you can make decisions rationally. It doesn’t sway it either way but you can at least get a good idea of some of the pros and cons involved.

Firstly, there is the property price register, there are issues with it – we have pointed this out before. While knowing what something sold for in the past gives no indication of the future selling price (and property is particularly heterogeneous) it …

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Bank margins after NAMA

The current debate is raging over NAMA and the pricing of loans, much of it centres on the value of the properties in question and about the way in which a ‘loan’ is valued (as opposed to the underlying asset). This makes for good headlines, but it doesn’t help the average person who is not shaping policy and who’s sole role in this mess will be to carry the can and pay their part in the tax pool which will ultimately fund the bailout.

However, you may be affected in other ways, and these are things which you have the choice of opting out of, namely that of the margin you are paying if you currently have any debt/credit outstanding.

Once NAMA comes in it will be extremely likely that banks increase their margins, it is important to consider the ‘why’ as much as the ‘when’ though so we’ll take a look at those.

Why?

PTsb lead the way on this, because they are not getting NAMA protection they have no need to worry …

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Mortgage Interest Relief (TRS) changes for May 2009

The changes mentioned in the recent budget will be kicking in soon and it will mean that people are likely to be affected in their mortgage interest relief for the month of May. TRS (tax relief at source) is going to be temporarily suspended for most of qualifying borrowers so that revenue can work through the claimants and determine who should be obtaining the benefit and at what level.

The rules regarding TRS can be found on the Revenue Commissioners website, some of the national commentary on it appeared in the Times (here).

According to banking sources we spoke to the borrowers who will be affected are any who changed their mortgage in the first seven years, so if you switched to get a better deal, topped up or made any changes you will probably be affected in the short term. As well as that, any first time buyers who moved during this time will be affected, if you bought a house (for instance) in 2004 then moved …

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