We were happy to take part in a conversation on the Last Word with Matt Cooper about the recent Ulsterbank loan sale, Karl Deeter was there for Irish Mortgage Brokers and Mick Barry TD was also part of the interview.
Mortgage approvals
Analysing figures released by the Banking and Payments Federation, the article sends a somewhat contradictory message. On the one hand, first time buyer mortgage approval volumes increased 19% this April compared to April of 2016. However, this volume also represents a 8.4% drop from the number of mortgages approved last month in March.
The decrease in the number of first time buyer mortgages this month is not indicative of the generally increasing annual trend, and may be due to the lack of buyer discounts offered in the month of April, when there isn’t many major holidays or events. April is generally the worst time of the year to finance a house (Business Insider).
On a larger scale, the trend in approval volumes for all mortgages follows that of first time buyer mortgages, but to a less exaggerated extent. The number in April represents an increase of 11.7% compared to April of 2016, and a decrease of 11.6% compared to March of this year.
The greater increase in first time buyer mortgages as compared to all mortgages could indicate that more …
Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk 106, featuring Irish Mortgage Brokers
Pat Kenny had Lorcan Sirr from DIT and Karl Deeter from our company on to talk about the property market in particular in light of the changes announced by the Central Bank.
The conversation covered many topics in the market and outlined where so many issues in housing are arising.
Negative equity mortgages
This is an interesting issue: negative equity mortgages, their availability, their merit and what they mean for homeowners. The story was covered by Conor Hunt in RTE
Mortgage providers to restrict rural lending
We were mentioned in the Irish Independent today in a story about lenders restricting mortgage credit in rural areas. They are doing this by lowering LTV’s or coming up with requirements on population size for LTV’s (Loan to Values).
Mortgage broker Karl Deeter of Irish Mortgage Brokers said lenders were now discriminating against those seeking loans to buy property in rural areas. “If you are not buying in Dublin, Cork, Limerick or Galway cities they do not want to know. This is all part of a growing trend to discriminate against properties outside of the cities,” Mr Deeter said.
Competitive Currency Devaluations
I have been talking for some time about a ‘rip off’ that the US will attempt to make against China, that it could take a belligerent form (default) or a traditional and less likely to cause a war option (devaluation of the dollar). It seems to be playing out and going for option two.
Competitive currency devaluations are alive and well in the world, why? Well, in early 09′ I wrote about it on the Paddy Power Trader blog:
Interbank Yield Curve: 28th September 2010
It has been a while since I posted on the yield curve, the main reason was that I lost my daily treasury letter from Bank of Scotland when all of their reporting went back to the UK and the daily replacement by Lloyds didn’t offer sufficient time-line to give a full curve.
The interesting thing that has happened in the interim is that the rules regarding forward rate prices between mortgage rates and Euribor rates has disconnected, in the same way that the ECB and Euribor disconnected in 2007, by this I mean that it is fascinating to see the established relationship end but the implications are horrifying for borrowers because it has meant that their monthly payments have gone up at a time the ECB is keeping rates low for the purpose of loosening up the financial cogs.
Take a look at the difference between February of this year and today, we can see that the long term rates are coming down and that flattening of the curve means two things: the ‘new normal’ is predicted to be one …
Examiner: OpEd – Creative thinking required on mortgages
We had an opinion piece on mortgages published in the Irish Examiner yesterday, you can see it by clicking on the image above or here.
We reward failed businesses repeatedly…
Jim Chanos, the famous short-seller talks about government bailouts and whether or not they are very effective. A brilliant overview of the role of investors and how government bailouts are perhaps not the panacea they are flaunted as.
TV3 coverage: Tracker mortgage story by Brian O’Donovan
Brian O’Donovan of TV3 covered this story, which relates to a press release by the Financial Regulator.