In an article today about mortgages by John Cradden of the Irish Independent we were quoted extensively regarding our thoughts on loans, extracts are below:

Last month saw the official launch of a new mortgage lender here in the form of Australian firm Pepper, who will be lending to the self-employed and those who got into arrears during the downturn but are now back on track.

“Up to now, if you had credit issues you were virtually unbankable, that is set to change,” said Karl Deeter of Irish Mortgage Brokers. “Equally, as banks add bells and whistles to their product suite, you’ll see some will be about flexibility rather than price and that’s a sign of competition in product differentiation coming through.”

He adds that rates will improve with the new competition. “This was what happened in the last credit cycle and will happen again so time will take care of that, but Ireland also has unusually high risk associated with our loans so that has to be factored in.”

The cashback offers are another popular incentive, with Bank of Ireland, Permanent TSB and Ulster Bank offering either 2pc cashback or fixed sums.

Deeter describes these offers as like “a cheap cologne” in that the strong waft gets people’s attention, but what people don’t often realise is that you may end up with a higher mortgage rate.

“The difference in your loan remaining if going for a fixed-rate versus the cheaper rate can be a big sum, so people need to do the maths correctly and not rely on a simple thing like ‘multiply the monthly difference and take it away from the cash to see if it makes sense’, because that calculation is wrong.”

We were really pleased with the mention and can say that it also accurately describes our views on the market at present.