Home loans available at First Direct again
First Direct, part of the HSBC banking group, has started selling mortgages again to new customers, six weeks after it called a temporary halt.
It stopped offering them on 1 April after being deluged by new applicants as the mortgage drought took hold.
Meanwhile the Halifax has become the latest big lender to cut the interest rates on some of its mortgage deals.
From Wednesday it will reduce some offers by 0.15%, but only for existing borrowers seeking to re-mortgage.
Last week, two of the UK’s biggest mortgage lenders, the Abbey and the Nationwide, made slight cuts to the interest rates on some of their home loans.
Mortgage Lenders predicts 7% house price fall
The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has predicted a 7% drop in UK house prices during 2008.
The CML expects there to be 35% fewer property transactions in England and Wales this year than in 2007.
The government’s own advisers last week suggested that house prices would fall 5-10% in a briefing paper to Cabinet.
The CML’s updated housing market forecast came as UK gross mortgage lending hit £25.3bn in April, a 5% rise from March but an 8% annual decline.
The lenders’ group also predicts that net mortgage lending will be £55bn in 2008, half of what it was in 2007 and down from its previous forecast of £90bn.
At the end of 2007, the CML predicted that house prices would rise by 1% in 2008, but the effects of the credit crunch on the availability of mortgages has led to the revised prediction of a 7% fall.
“In the wake of the credit crunch, 2008 will be remembered as a very weak year in the housing market,” said CML director general Michael Coogan.
‘Crumbs of comfort’
A fall in prices would be welcomed by some who have seen a decade of price rises rule them out of the market.
In the wake of the credit crunch, 2008 will be remembered as a very weak year in the housing market
Michael Coogan, CML director