Ulsterbank fire the next shot in the mortgage ‘rate-war’

Ulsterbank recently upped the ante in the mortgage rate-war by reducing a suite of their rates, the story was covered in the Independent which also quoted Irish Mortgage Brokers.

Karl Deeter said the cuts represent the latest shot to be fired in the mortgage rate war.

“In response to Avant Money’s European-style rates, Ulster Bank has had to respond and now it means that other lenders are under even greater pressure to follow or beat these rates.”

He said this means customers will win. But they have to switch lender is they are paying high rates.

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Mortgages on the rise

A sense of impending doom has been a huge part of economic and political decisions within the last few months due to the ever uncertain Brexit debacle. These feelings are slowly beginning to fade in Ireland due to the increased time that Irish businesses and banks have had to prepare for the EU split. Although this event is bound to cause slight fluctuations, economists have noted that the economic future for Ireland is still bright. 

Banks and buyers alike are taking note of this promise, which has been obvious through the most recent data in relation to mortgage approvals and house prices. According to recent bank data, there has been a  significant rise in the number of home related mortgage applications and acceptances. 

The Irish Bank and Payment Federation found that from April to June, there were 10,157 mortgages taken out, which is an 8.8pc rise from the previous period. Using yearly comparisons, it has been shown that the issued mortgage rate this time last year was around 800 acceptances lower. It topped the approvals for the first three months …

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The future is refinancing

Getting a loan can be extremely hard to achieve, especially in today’s Irish economy. With higher interest rates than usual, many people who have successfully gotten a loan may be looking for an opportunity to refinance in a few years to come.

Refinancing would not be beneficial for those people who are repaying loans. This is largely due to the banks uncertainty as the Brexit date draws closer. Banks are afraid that there will be an economic crash that will leave people with loans unable to pay the banks back at their projected rate. These fears are outwardly displayed in the form of high interest rates and low amounts of accepted loan applications.

The current interest rates rely heavily on the type of loan that you are receiving, but can vary significantly. The most common forms of loans are mortgage, auto, and personal. In any of these agreements, the interest rates are high in comparison to previous years.

Refinancing in the future may be key for many of the people who are currently being approved to take out …

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KBC reactivate the switching market

There has been an absence of competition in the switching market for some time. AIB don’t even do them while others try to avoid switcher loans. PTsb have been in that space for some time but were largely unchallenged except by (to a lesser extent) Ulsterbank.

Which is why it’s nice to see KBC come out with a product for people who want to switch to them. Naturally the best prices are at low loan to values, these types of loans have obvious advantages to banks in terms of the condition of their loan book, but it’s good to see this as moderating credit conditions have to start somewhere.

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90,000 Mortgage job losses

CNN have reported that there were 90,000 mortgage industry job losses in 2007, I know of one of them, my old room-mate in Chicago Maurice Mulroe. He is a father of two and was in the industry for a decade, then one day he walks into work and out of the blue is told to go home ‘it’s over’. It took him 7 months to find another job that his skillset could qualify him for, and even low paid jobs were being hotly contested by the new wave of skilled redundancies.

Often redundancies are in industries that are mainly unskilled or manual but the Mortgage Crisis in the US has put people with college degrees, years of expertise and experience out in the cold, and that was part of what gave early January’s increase in the unemployment statistics.

The same thing has happend (albeit to a lesser degree) here in Ireland, Fresh Mortgages entered the market during 2007 and they were a good bunch of people, good at what they did too but then they …

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