We were glad to chat with Wendy Grace on Spirit Radio about mortgage switching and the time it takes to get it done.
Our view is that the biggest enemy to most people isn’t rates or delays, it’s inertia, so getting on top of your finances is key.
Talk to a broker today! Don’t walk by massive savings, there are still great deals to be had.
The Surveyors Journal did an excellent info-graphic on how much it costs to build a house (with no land cost factored in)
It’s fairly clear that costs are not as simple as ‘cheaper land’. That is only one part of the equation, the other parts are things like local authority costs, Part V, VAT, expected profits, all of which are not directly linked to prime costs of the materials and labour that creates the construction part of the home.
Worth looking at twice before wondering why housing is so damn expensive.
In the ongoing variable rates pricing fracas there are many points being overlooked. The first is why our mortgage rates are higher than other European countries, but we should just ignore that – at least to stay popular.
We’ll say that the government/Central Bank pressure works and banks drop their rates, what next?
We might get around to the greater number of people under price pressure for housing (the renters), but that’s unlikely, instead we’ll inadvertently drive up house prices a little more by making credit more easily available.
Because the lower the variable rate the lower the stress test. Lower rates equals more credit, it’s a fact of life in lending.
You heard it here first. The lower variable rates go the more it frees up a persons lending capability. We have covered the way the Central Bank lending rules won’t work to the point of being annoying (and we weren’t alone, the ESRI and …
Last week on ‘Talking Money’ Mary Wilson spoke to Karl and Jill about ways to ‘beat the bank’. In an era of low returns and higher costs on credit and use of the financial system beating the banks becomes an important aspect of finances because of the amount of interaction most of us have with banks.
This week on Drivetime’s ‘Talking Money’ we looked at ways to take the maximum money saving ideas and put them to use in your own day to day life. Some are well known, others are not, but we are hopeful that there was something for everybody!
We are fans of technology and that is why way back in 2007 we went for a fully transparent business model which would allow our clients to track their mortgage on our system which uses the same level of security as online banking.
The current method of an online [glossary id=’6898′ slug=’mortgage’ /] application has not developed in Ireland to the extent that it could have, in part due to a collapse of lending.
We envisage that in time it will all be done online and electronically which will be good for everybody, brokers in particular as currently we end up using vast amounts of paper to replication applications to different lenders. The indexing of documents so that they can be sent securely online from one database to another is the next step.
In terms of when that will happen? Probably not for a few years yet, the systems don’t exist in banks to accept documents like this yet, a [glossary id=’6802′ slug=’broker’ /] could change easily because they have smaller less mission critical systems to work with. By that …
Here is a round up of the leading rates at present for 90% mortgages. There are different rates depending on your LTV so if you are not looking for 90% you’ll need to call so we can go through them with you.
Variable rate: AIB 3.54% 1yr fixed rate: KBC 3.99% 2yr fixed rate: BOI 4.49% 5yr fixed rate: BOI 5.29%
We were asked by Brian O’Donovan of TV3 to talk about the recent CSO figures which showed that house prices are falling but that in Dublin there is a different dynamic in non-apartment houses.
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.