When the truth comes out about arrears.

I often try to focus on ‘what is’ rather than ‘what is right’ (and sometimes still get it wrong!), but the idea is to look at something from as objective a standpoint as possible. I’ll take the National Geographic for instance (stick with me on this!), if you watch it objectively and see a lion kill a gazelle you realise that it is nature, the gazelle didn’t want to be torn apart, equally the lion doesn’t want to starve to death and if you accept that lions killing gazelles is a perfectly natural thing then you are seeing what ‘is’. On the other hand if you watch the same scene but the build up to it was following the life of that particular gazelle from birth and its a Bambi story then the killing scene becomes a sickening tragedy.

That is the difference sometimes between looking at what is ‘just’ or ‘right’ and what merely ‘is’, I don’t know about you but I certainly struggle with that at times. It is …

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Good news: Rate drops and recovery indicators

Doom is the only thing selling lately, but today we will bring you some of the Sunny statistics that are being largely overlooked. This doesn’t mean we are well down the road to recovery but there is the distinct possibility that 2009 will be a turn around year for the global economy, that turn around might be a turn for the worse too though! However, the statistics we will show you now are all positive economic indicators.

1: The end of March saw the housing figures compiled for the previous month [USA]. In February the US Housing sales jumped , existing homes up 5.1% and new build was up 4.7% as buyers took foreclosure properties and others that were thought to be at ‘bargain basement’ pricing opportunities. This could be a hiccup or it could be the start of a trend, it is important to note however, that it took spectacular price drops for the renewed activity to occur. The economic stimulus package also provides tax relief to eligible first time …

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1 in 10 rental properties have dropped prices in the last week.

The website Irish Property Watch has released its latest figures show that from the the 9th to the 16th of November 2008 there were 1,896 rent reductions out of an available stock of 19,349. The average reduction was €93 per month.

The ever popular website thepropertypin.com posted a thread about this and one interesting observation was that perhaps the ECB rate reduction has accelerated the drop in asking prices on the rental market. Why? Because owners of a pincer movement created by falling rates and vacancies. There are many empty properties on the market and that means supply versus demand has a distinct advantage on the demand side, there are too many properties on the market both for sale and for rent. That would lead to a downward trend in asking prices.

The rate drop has an impact on the supply side, now that repayments are dropping landlords will likely …

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Every little helps…. Mortgages by Tesco?

I read an interesting article today (here) about Tesco. Apparently Tesco Personal Finance will offer mortgages in the UK in the near future, however, they have not decided if they will include broker facing product ranges in the recently announced offering.

The supermarket chain has taken on Benny Higgins, former head of retail business at HBOS, and in press over the weekend he says there are plans to expand the Tesco Personal Finance offering to include mortgage and current accounts products.

He said “Today there is an opportunity to be a responsible lender in mortgages. At present there are still funding problems but that will change. In the second quarter of next year financing will be freer and there could be a very active re-mortgaging market.”

Tesco have (in Ireland) faced bitter competition from discounters such as Aldi and Lidl, however, neither of those firms have entered into the personal finance arena. Tesco is already doing car insurance, …

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