26/6/09 - Given everything that has hit the headlines recently it was something of a surprise to learn that RBS have agreed a salary package approaching £10m for the new man charged with rescuing the troubled bank, currently 70% owned by us! Am I right to be disappointed that I did not get invited to sit in on the interview?
Putting that to one side, the mortgage market is undoubtedly ‘hotting up’ again. Applications are at their highest level for some time and we are starting to see more ‘sold’ signs appearing almost daily.
For those of you old enough to remember the book ‘Catch 22’ many of our lender friends are now seemingly caught in that trap. Having had to let many of their staff go over the last 15 months or so and with business volumes on the increase, a few are now starting to suffer backlogs. Some lenders are up to 10 days behind and will not fast forward urgent cases causing much difficulty for new customers. Others have daily funding allocations that are released to mortgage intermediaries at 11am and inevitably are all utilised by 11.02am!
Fixed rates are on the increase and we still have some lenders arranging their criteria in such a way that they don’t write much business and this fits with their business plan needs at the present time. So it is a perverse situation we find ourselves in, at a time when we are starting to see rising consumer confidence!
That said, there are still some very competitive fixed rates available but we have to keep a close watch on them as lenders can pull them at a moments notice. Some lenders are offering fee free legal and valuation options on re-mortgages so, if you think it might be time to fix, do it now and catch a good rate with minimal or no costs along the way.
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