Mortgage market update in the UK

The mortgage market in the UK after Brexit was announced has been shaky. With everyone not knowing how Brexit will turn out, they are weary of committing to huge financial obligations.

However, the UK mortgage market is starting to see potential buyers increase again. In May, a total of 121,464 mortgages were completed.

Total mortgage loans increased by £3.5 billion, which is the fastest pace in more than a year. Mortgage lending has increased 2.9 percent in the past year. The prediction for next years growth is 2 percent in 2017.

The slowdown in growth we can see come from the Brexit. The value of the Sterling dropping makes customers reluctant to purchase a house. This has very negatively affected the housing market in the UK.

The consumer credit card and personal loan debts have been on the rise as well. This is also causing worry from the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee as consumer credit continues to rise.

More regulations are going to be put in place to slow down the lending growth and another measure to be …

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Mortgage Market Update

The Financial Broker gives readers an overview on currently property prices and mortgage market conditions.

The Central Statistics Office published a report showing price inflation on property had increased 10.7% in the past year up to February. A similar report reveal how the number of newly build housing last year was 14,932 units when estimates denote a demand of up to 50,000 units. These numbers illustrate a problem in the current mortgage market, which this article pinpoints the causes of. The author laments about rising property prices, arguing that many potential home buyers have missed out on the prime time to purchase property, and are currently no long capable of affording the housing of their choice at an acceptable price.

The author attributes the current housing price and rent inflation in Ireland as consequences of a lack of supply in urban areas instead of lax macro-prudential regulations. In fact, she argues that current Central Bank regulations are too restrictive, and thus have prevented demanders from being able to locate and buy affordable housing. While the prudential regulations have lowered the …

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Newstalk Lunchtime – priced out of housing?

We spoke to Jonathan Healy on Newstalk’s ‘Lunchtime’ about the issue of rising house prices and how the solution is more supply, at least relative to many other commonly prescribed fixes.

We also discussed the idea of there being a fee for making a bid on a property as well.

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ECB Zero? Will a 0% base rate fix anything?

There was an interesting article in which originated on Bloomberg which Nouriel Roubini said that the ECB should cut rates to 0% and increase quantitative easing to ease dysfunctional markets. I agree that a more accommodative approach would be beneficial, but a base rate of zero would likely not make much of a difference except on the margin.

The idea of a Central Bank is that they really wear two hats, there is a fiscal v.s. monetary balance to be struck, sometimes they act monetarily, other times fiscally depending on the inflation expectation. The best explanation I have seen of this so far is offered by PIMCO’s Paul McCulley where he states that ‘as the game changes so does the meaning of central bank independence’ and he is correct, if disinflation or deflation is a threat then priming the fire for some inflation is the correct approach, but you would be far better doing this with the money supply via quantitative easing than on the …

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Dan Mitchell of Cato

Dan Mitchell of Cato (and the Centre for Freedom and Prosperity) is a guy I enjoy speaking and listening to as well, he is a great Libertarian thinker and regular commentator on Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN and Fox News. Here are two of his latest video’s, the first is on debt and the second is about money laundering laws.

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Can Theory and Jargon destroy your net worth?

This is an interesting vlog on some simple monetary economics ideas, the classical definition of inflation is discussed in terms of ‘money supply’ but then it turns towards some of the other issues such ‘what is money supply?’ there is no set agreement on which count should generally be used (in USD it used to be M3 which is no longer published). That has an interesting implication in the fact that banks are ‘hoarding’ money, the fact is that they are holding huge amounts of capital which isn’t monetized, but it can be and that means a return to ‘credit flowing’ could actually cause some serious inflation as the money flows into the real economy minus any increase in real purchasing power.

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Pete Peterson formerly of Blackstone, CFR, Lehman and Secretary of Commerce

Pete Peterson is a fascinating individual, he came from humble beginnings and went on to work at executive levels in some of the most well known finance houses in the world. He mentions some of the deficit fears that have been laid out in this blog many times in the past and the inflationary risk that comes with it, Peterson is in agreement with Volcker that there is a serious dollar risk forming.

Peterson is also a human, he is one of the few Wall St. legends to come out and admit that he needed psychotherapy in the past, this interview is absolutely worth watching and learning from.

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Inflation in 2010?

John Brynjolfsson of Armored Wolf talks to Bloomberg about his views on inflation, he was formerly a leading fund manager with PIMCO who are the largest bond fund house in the USA, his speciality was TIPS (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities – a security which provides protection against inflation), which in my book means the guy knows his inflation!

Critically he talks about the difference between Japan [and the potential Nipponisation as advanced by economists such as Paul Krugman] of the US market, then his belief in what will happen in the mid-term future regarding inflation. He is not saying ‘hyper-inflation’ such as Marc Faber continuously talks about, but his 4-6% is still significant, in particular if it hits during a contraction in which case its real effect will be greater.

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The Final Crash, by Hugo Bouleau (book review & interview)

Hugo Bouleau’s (pseudonym of the author) book was for me, perhaps the most riveting reading of 2008. I like to underline important sentences in books, it’s a habit I picked up from a history teacher in secondary school. Looking back through ‘The Final Crash’ I can safely say I went through a whole pencil!

Bouleau writes the book not only from his practitioner experience as an asset manager for a large private bank in the Channel Islands (he is also a fellow of the Securities & Investment Institute), not only from his educational background from City University in London, but from that of a concerned citizen of the world who realises the core issue of the financial crisis, the one that remains largely uncovered in the day to day reporting, that of debt and leverage, in particular, that of irresponsible debt, and excessive leverage.

Bouleau has since changed careers, having recently started a Sharia compliant Islamic Finance operation. I caught up with him on the phone just as …

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