There is increased coverage of mortgages in the press of late in particular in the area of fixing or staying on a variable, below are the best rates available on the market by class of product.
Best Variable Rate with an LTV Restriction: 2.25% Best Variable Rate with no LTV Restriction: 2.55% Best 1yr Fixed Rate: 2.35% Best 2yr Fixed Rate: 2.65% Best 3yr Fixed Rate: 3.15% Best 5yr Fixed Rate: 3.7% Best 10yr Fixed Rate: 4.5%
Recently brokers have been accused of having a financial incentive to place loans with certain banks, we cannot deny that he playing field was far from level, at one end some banks were paying 1% and others were paying 0.5%, the scene was set for commission based decisions, that isn’t to say they occurred – but having such income disparity certainly put the odds in favour of best advice being at risk.
So it is with depressed joy that we can say this situation no longer exists. Depressed because getting to this point has meant a 50% decrease in our gross income (while VAT has risen which hurts a zero VAT business like brokerage, and transactions as well as acquisition costs have risen, along with increased lead times and processing hours in order to get cases approved), but joy because the air has been officially cleared surrounding intermediaries, we are essentially back to a level playing field on the commissions front.
At or near the 50 basis point procurement fee is where all of the major lenders who deal with …
With the Dow back above 10,000, the message from many on Wall Street is: Hurry! The recovery train is leaving the station! Don’t miss out on the next phase of the bull market!
Not so fast, says Robert Prechter, president of Elliott Wave International and author of Conquer the Crash.
“Everybody who’s saying ‘buy stocks’ today or ‘buy real estate’ is, I think, setting up people to get really hurt,” says Prechter, who believes the bear market rally is reaching a major top.
“We had a great opportunity at [S&P] 667 – that was the big opportunity,” says Prechter, who did make a bullish call last February. “The market is up 60% [from the March lows]. There’s no way the S&P is going up 60% from here.”
Prechter’s advice for most investors, as described in the recently released second edition of his book, is fairly simple:
Play it Safe: Keep as much of your assets as possible in cash and cash equivalents, Prechter recommends, stressing not all money market funds and bank CDs …