Nottingham Letting Agent Property Blog

The Financial Services Authority is concerned over the number of interest only mortgages which are nearing the end of their life, as many of these homeowners may have no reasonable hope of paying off the loan. Around 4.5 million mortgages in the UK are interest only, and many were given during the boom years to people now well into their 50s. The FSA has estimated around 1.5 million interest only mortgages will be due for repayment between now and 2020, and are worth £120 billion. This would mean 150,000 interest only mortgages ending each year for the next few years.The trouble...

The Council of Mortgage Lenders has just released its figures for house purchases and remortgaging in January. Their figures show that 35,600 loans, worth £5.3 billion were given for house purchases in January. This figure is a 22% increase by volume, and a 23% increase by value compared to a year ago, but is 25% less by volume and 24% less by value compared to December 2011. This seasonal dip is completely normal and is due to cold weather, shorter days and lack of cash after Christmas.In January the number of loans for remortgaging fell, and remortgaging saw its first year-on-year...

The Council of Mortgage Lending has just published the results of its research into comparing the cost of owning a property versus renting. The report used data from the Valuations Office Agency and the CML's Regulated Mortgage Survey. Recent news reports seem to show that it's cheaper to have a mortgage than to rent, but other research has found home ownership is still more costly. The CML points out that when you ignore the need for a large deposit then home ownership can be cheaper than renting a similar property, but these costs only relate to a certain percentage of the...

According to figures recently released by the Council of Mortgage Lenders, the number of properties purchased with buy to let mortgages rose by around 84,000 last year, helping to increase the supply of privately rented homes. During the last quarter of 2011, 34,800 buy to let mortgages were approved, although 15,000 of these were remortgages. They have a total worth of £4 billion. These figures are almost the same as those seen in the third quarter, but are substantially up on the fourth quarter of 2010 when 26,300 loans were approved, worth £2.9 billion.While this might seem like a relatively large...