Sunday Independent: Irish Mortgage Brokers mentioned in housing article

We were happy to see that our concern about social engineering was mentioned in an article in the Sunday Independent by Brendan O’Connor, the quote is below.

Or does the Central Bank think it’s desirable? And why has the Central Bank taken it upon itself to decide that Irish people should move to renting property rather than buying their own house? Mortgage broker Karl Deeter has suggested the Central Bank is indulging in social engineering. What other shifts in how we live would the Central Bank like to introduce you wonder. Perhaps a one-child policy?

The issue of social engineering was first raised by us in the consultation process when it began in 2014, specifically we said this was a concern in the following two quotes taken from our submission:

This policy will ensure that many people fall prey to a policy that in protecting banks hurts their future wealth. We are, and will remain, strongly opposed to measures that have societal engineering outcomes such as this.

And later we also said that

For people who don’t have rich parents …

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Mortgage Market Trend Outlook 2011

It’s a new year and we have a new set of predictions for the Irish mortgage market in 2011. In our report (get it here or click on the image) we go through them in detail (bullet points below) and we also review our forecast for 2010 to see just how inaccurate we were on the calls we made for last year.

In our report this year the main areas are:

1.Banks will push up interest rates by another 100bps or 1% (independent of any move by the ECB) costing the average borrower (loan of €200k over 25yrs) an additional €1,280 p.a. Rate hikes may start as early as this month. 2. Variable interest rates will generally start to rest at or north of 5% by 2012. The state controlled banks in particular will be forced to make some painful decisions on interest rates they charge to customers. 3. Fixed rates may be temporarily removed from the market, offered on a limited basis or priced out …

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RTE Primetime features Irish Mortgage Brokers

Mark Little speaks to Aoife Walsh from Respond! and Karl Deeter of Irish Mortgage Brokers about the looming mortgage issues in the Irish property market, the commentary was on the recent IBF protocol (Irish Bankers Federation) whereby people working with their lender can get a further 6 month extension on dealing with their mortgage if they are in difficulty. While we broadly welcome the move we also believe that there are other motivations for it as well as some genuine questionable solutions.

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UBS write down €37 Billion, wait…How much is a billion?

When you hear people talking about ‘A Billion’ be it a Bank talking about a billion in write-downs, or a politician talking about a billion in tax spending, it’s important to put the number of one billion in perspective.

One Billion seconds ago it was 1959, one billion minutes ago Jesus was alive, a billion hours ago our ancestors were in the stone age eating raw meat and dying of common colds. A billion days ago there we were not walking on two feet. However in monetary terms a billion dollars ago was 8 hours and 20 minutes ago at the rate it is being spent by the US Government, it’s 5 days ago at the rate the ECB has been printing it in order to avoid the credit crunch and it is also almost as much as Sierra Leone’s GDP (at the official exchange rate), that’s for the whole country for a whole year.

So when UBS came out and said that it has ‘written …

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Learn about Mortgages

If you want to learn about mortgages there are a few places to start.

Firstly you can take a course such as the ‘Mortgage Diploma’ offered by the LIA (Life Insurance Association – www.lia.ie) and that covers the subject in the fashion you would expect from a textbook, I personally feel that it is a good grounding but nothing can substitute experience.

Speaking to a person with several years of experience will enable you to get an insight into the working elements of mortgages and the things that separate good mortgages from bad ones, all mortgages were not created equal!

The people with experience are Mortgage Brokers, Bankers, Financial Advisors, Accountants and Solicitors. That is not an exhaustive list but it does cover the main industry players and if you want to get a good grounding spending some time with any of these people will go a long way towards educating you about mortgages.

The elements that define mortgages (if we are to take the main things) are LTV (that stands for ‘Loan to Value’), Rate, Term, and of course …

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Mortgage Companies in Ireland

In Ireland there are several methods of getting a mortgage, you can do it directly with a lender, or via an Intermediary (which is what Irish Mortgage Brokers are). Both lenders and Intermediaries are regulated by the Financial Regulator and they are the ones who set policies and regulations that all financial companies must adhere to.

If you need a mortgage ‘do some research’ would be the first piece of advice anybody should give you. There is nothing that can replace doing your own research, for such a massive undertaking as most mortgages are – the vast majority will make up more than 20% of your net income for quite some time – it is tantamount to irresponsible if you don’t try to familiarise yourself with the process and what it involves.

After that you need to work with a firm that you are happy with, sometimes you might know a person in the industry or maybe you will pick a company out of the Golden Pages but in any case make sure that you are satisfied the person you …

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Permanent TSB? More like Permanent inability.

Permanent Tsb are in the financial news again, this time its not for ripping off brokers though, its because their sub-prime mortgage wing ‘Springboard’ have had their funding pulled by Merrill Lynch. Springboard is a joint venture between PTsb and Merrill Lynch, the question now is ‘what does a mortgage company who can’t lend money do?’. I suspect they will be standing in line with the Woodworm who specialises in concrete only products.

The same thing happened several months back to another lender and they swiftly left the market. The concern now is for the IL&P share price, Dennis Casey will have some serious wangling on his hands to avoid disaster because he now has a war on several fronts, in fact, if I could raise Bismark from the dead and get a decent Prussian translator I would do it and let the original ‘Mr. Blood and Guts’ lay down some facts for the beleaguered CEO of Permanent Tsb.

Today’s news is about the fact that a major bank (Merrill Lynch) is pulling funding from Springboard, they are not pulling …

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How to get a Mortgage, getting a mortgage is easy…

If you want to get a mortgage the process is fairly simple, it’s a big undertaking for certain but that doesn’t mean that everything surrounding it is overly complex. A mortgage is a security backed loan, this means that there is some actual asset that a lender has a lien on (lien: this term means ‘ownership of’ so if a lender has a lein on your property in the form of a mortgage then they own the property ahead of you owning it until you pay them off) and its generally called ‘the security’ or just the ‘property’.

The biggest concern for any bank or building society when considering a mortgage is the clients ability to pay back the loan, this is sometimes referred to as ‘repayment capacity’, or if you want the hardcore underwriting terminology its the ‘debt service ratio’ and its normally a calculation that decides numerically if a person has the ability to service a loan obligation. There are different ways of doing this, some banks use a multiplier, for instance: you can borrow four times your …

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