Citation:
Lenders pull fixed-rate mortgages. Is a housing market crash coming?
· Interest rate fears spark rush to withdraw deals
· Millions with variable rate loans face higher costs
Rupert Jones and Patrick Collinson
Friday April 20, 2007
The Guardian
Cheap fixed-rate mortgage deals started disappearing yesterday as banks and building societies began to factor in the possibility of two or even three more interest rate rises in the coming months.
Homebuyers found themselves left in the lurch after the Halifax and many other lenders began withdrawing their best fixed-rate deals and indicated they would be replacing them with more expensive products.
The Halifax, Britain's biggest lender, is withdrawing the bulk of its two and three-year fixed-rate deals today. Alliance & Leicester and the Portman, Skipton, Newcastle and Kent Reliance building societies have all pulled deals, while Northern Rock and The Mortgage Works have put their fixes on "withdrawal watch", which means they could be taken off sale at any time, said Melanie Bien at the home loans broker Savills Private Finance.
The City believes an interest rate rise next month is a certainty, with some analysts talking about a possible half-point increase to combat rising inflation. This week's announcement that inflation, as measured by the consumer prices index, had risen to 3.1% spooked the money markets, with "swap rates" - which determine the pricing of fixed-rate deals - rising to their highest level this year. That suggests there may be two further rate rises to come from today's level of 5.25%, though some are pencilling in three quarter-point rises during 2007.
That will be worrying news for the millions of people on variable rate and "base rate tracker" mortgages, some of whom may already be struggling following three rate hikes since the beginning of August. On a £200,000 interest-only mortgage, not uncommon given today's prices, monthly costs will rise by £125 if base rates hit 6%.
Doom-mongers say the coming rises will be the trigger that finally bursts the house price bubble, with some, such as ABN Amro, declaring that prices in the UK are overvalued by nearly 50%. However, Halifax and Nationwide said they did not expect base rate to rise above 5.5% and, while predicting a slowdown, were not anticipating a crash.
In February, a record 87% of first-time buyers opted for the security of a fixed-rate loan, and will be protected from the turbulence ahead.
Brokers say homebuyers will need to act quickly if they want to grab a decent deal. "You will be lucky to get a two-year fix for less than 5%," said Ms Bien.
Halifax yesterday had a two-year deal at 4.99% with a £1,999 fee, requiring a minimum deposit of 15%, though it may not be around today.
Nick Gardner at the rival broker Chase de Vere Mortgage Management said: "Lenders are pulling fixed-rates left, right and centre because of the likely rise in interest rates. Alliance & Leicester has already pulled all its standard fixes, Portman is pulling its two-year fixes by end of play today and Skipton has pulled its three- and five-year deals. Newcastle has also closed the doors on its two-year and 10-year fixes. Clearly the market is anticipating another two rate rises."
Lenders are now moving towards higher fees rather than pushing up rates too much. The fees - typically around £1,000 - help subsidise a lower headline interest rate. "People are still stretching themselves to get the property they want, then working backwards to find the mortgage to pay for it. The majority of new borrowers are taking loans at around 3.5 to four times their income, and bridging the gap with big deposits from their parents," said Mr Gardner.
Oliver Gilmartin, senior economist at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, said: "As some providers look to pull these products, existing fixed-rate deals are likely to command a higher price in the market, adding to the woes of first-time buyers looking for added security in the early years of repaying their mortgage.
"Higher borrowing costs will continue to slow house price inflation in 2007 with those on variable rate deals feeling the strain."
Smart money starts getting out
The doommongers have predicted an end to Britain's house price boom for years. Are their forecasts finally coming true?
· Matt Barrett, the former chairman of Barclays, is reported to have sold his Chelsea home and moved into a rented house, having decided an offer of 25% above the asking price was too good to miss. Sir John Ritblat has sold most of his shares in property firm British Land.
· "Our house prices, by comparison with those in France, are ... demented." Henley MP Boris Johnson, writing in the Telegraph yesterday.
· The website housepricecrash.co.uk, the spiritual home of property market pessimists, launched in 2003 but its founder sold out last year as the predictions failed to materialise. However new owner, Brendan McLoughlin says the site has enjoyed its busiest ever traffic over the last week.
· The investment bank ABN Amro this week issued a Home Truths research note declaring that UK housing was 50% overvalued. Prices, it said, had become "detached from fundamentals" and "a housing market collapse will undermine confidence in sterling, preventing the Bank of England from cutting rates and prolonging the downturn".
· David Brown, an economist at Bear Stearns, said the prospect of 6% interest rates would greet Gordon Brown at No 10. "The spectre that's worrying the Bank of England is a wage/price inflation spiral. I think [Bank governor] Mervyn King will go for aggressive measures to batten down inflation. This is not the 1980s: the Bank of England is no longer the East End branch of the Treasury."
· Even housebuilders think the market needs to pause. "Another half percentage point rise [in interest rates] is good news if it has the effect of pulling price inflation down to a more sustainable level ... The bottom line is that the market cannot keep going at 10%; it needs to be in line with earnings inflation," said John Watson, chief executive of Bellway, Britain's fifth-largest house builder.
· Lenders are taking ever more desperate measures to enable buyers to afford sky-high prices. Mainstream lenders, Royal Bank of Scotland, Alliance & Leicester and Northern Rock, are looking at lending six times what you earn.
Through the roof: From £300 to £1m in 106 years
A vicar's widow bought this south London terrace house in 1901 from the developers, Prudential Assurance, for £300. In its first 50 years it went up in price just four times, but since 1983 it has gone up in price 50 times, with the most gravity-defying rises in the last six months alone. If it went on the market today, it would fetch £1m.
A Land Registry check on the property in Herne Hill, which has changed hands 14 times since 1901, confirms the scale of the recent boom, but also reveals how over the century prices in the capital have frequently stagnated or fallen.
At the first sale, in 1903, the house fetched £575, but by 1927 it had gone up to just £825 - a gain of only 1.1% a year over 24 years. Sold again in 1929, it fell back to £735. Four years later, in 1933, it was sold for £800, still below the price achieved six years earlier.
Helped by the postwar housing shortage, it sold for £1,740 in 1947, more than double the 1933 price. But as Londoners fled the peasoupers of the 1950s, the figure fell. In 1958 it sold for £1,500, a fall of 14% over 11 years.
Since then prices have boomed. In 1968, it changed hands for £6,200, a gain of 226%, and in 1983 was bought by builders for £20,000. They subdivided it into three flats, selling them in 1986 for a total of £133,000. The middle, two-bed flat fetched £52,000, and sold in 1999 for £141,500. In 2005 the flat sold for £250,000 and today local agents Hamptons International say it would market for £370,000. Hamptons sold a whole house in the terrace last month for £945,000.
Tiens JeanRech toi qui est banquier en GB on ne prête plus à taux fixe... Qu'en penses tu...
Finalement entre l'Espagne et l'Angleterre je ne sais pas laquelle va faire le plus de dégats... Il ne faut plus grand chose pour que cela explose de partout...
On envisage trois hausses des taux en Angleterre soit des taux courts à 6% donc les banquiers ne veulent plus distribuer des prêts à taux fixe en ce moment, l'inflation est à son plus haut là bas...
Citation:
Doom-mongers say the coming rises will be the trigger that finally bursts the house price bubble, with some, such as ABN Amro, declaring that prices in the UK are overvalued by nearly 50%.
Les hausses de taux seront le détonateur selon ABN Amro le marché est surévalué de 50% (quelle idiotie d'acheter quelque chose 100% plus cher que sa valeur réelle) !
CREDIT CRUNCH BIENTOT !!!