Did I mention we don’t denominate our currency in the Euro?

It also offers the second largest French population in the world.

You can easily visit home on the amazing new(ish) Eurostar link from St Pancras.

We don’t say for a moment that France isn’t a wonderful place – it is and will surely always be so. But for now, London can be your home as well as ours.

Drop us a line should you need some mortgage advice – we claim to be London’s greatest mortgage broker’s!

See you soon…

However the effects are that lender’s are trying to reduce the amount they are lending. One of the main ways that they do this is by trying to switch off / reduce applications they get from mortgage brokers.

So it came to pass that I told a friend of mine to go direct to a lender, as they were offering a much better rate.

What an honest and lovely chap I am. How honourable. Frankly, how wonderful. So imagine my shock when he came to my birthday bash last Friday full of crossness.

He tootled along to the local branch of this bank with all his supporting documentation. He was greeted with “where is your wife?”. He was surprised at this, as her presence had not been required when the appointment was made. So he dropped off his documents and went back a couple of days later with the required spouse.

Lovely, nice to meet her. Where are your documents? I gave them to you last time??! Oh right. No, I threw them away as I thought you’d bring them today.

So – three meetings JUST to get the application submitted. He was daunted as to what lies ahead.

Well – presumably the bank sat you down, gave you a coffee and tried to sell you some ancillary products?

No. The “meetings” were conducted in a corridor.

He begged me to take over. Obviously I felt his personal anguish, however it did fill me with a certain amount of joy that the Banks are still so wonderfully hopeless.

By way of thanks and to celebrate being 40 he bought me a JagerBomb. Disgusting, but effective.

Underpinning the whole thing? Demand. It is no secret that rents are on the rise – 5.2% last year and another 20% over the next 5 years*. Of course in this economic cycle as any other – the activity starts in London and spreads from there.

Strong rents and static house price inflation can inevitably only lead to the next thing on the economic cycle as, over time, people see the benefits once again of home ownership – and banks start to lend.

Is it really as simple as that – actually – yes! The press, politicians and anyone with a 3rd party interest will try and persuade us otherwise – but really the cycle just keeps repeating itself – just with different facts, faces and names. Of course we’ve got a vested interest too! Only you can decide.

The wealthy know this all this. Right now at Just Us we are doing a lot of buy to let for London’s landlords. For those with equity, it’s all rather straightforward. Getting a £1m loan on a £2m house is reasonably straightforward. Getting a loan of say £225k on £250k is much harder work.

Which brings us to the point of what is “right” and “wrong”. Well this article isn’t about that. Obviously we have some views and the whole system does seem a little crazy. But as someone once said – it’s the best one we’ve got. (Right now that seems hard to believe)

That’s life though isn’t it? For those with vision AND those who make the decision, the next economic cycle offers great opportunity.

No easy answer’s – sorry about that. But great opportunity for London’s Buy to Let.

PS – Innovative new property product launch coming up on 1st June. Drop us your email address to be put on the list.

*source: Savills, Rightmove, The Financial Times

Fortunately its proprietors are experienced property owners themselves. They have seen the UK property market in operation over an economic cycle or two. They know that, looking back over their lifetime,  providing financial aid to their offspring now will benefit them enormously over the long term.

Which is lucky – because no other bank is helping much right now.

Even the government’s latest scheme – NewBuy  -isn’t the answer to all problems. Despite being targeted at those with smaller deposits (sounds like first time buyers to me) the whole thing is a bit of a fanfare. In fact it’s only really represents a great deal to the desperate new house developers. Other than this scheme, ALL the UK main mortgage lenders won’t touch New Build houses and flats without much bigger deposits. This poses the problem – what to do with your 95% loan on a ex-new build house after say, 2 years of ownership. There is no credible answer to this.

Which brings us back to the Bank of Mum and Dad. Actually it has been open for generations. Notably in the last boom period of 1995-2007, gifted deposits were commonplace. We just hope that your branch is open for business….

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR-K3Khcrjs

All sorts of records are being broken. Obviously the lowest bank base rate since Noah’s ark. But also more telling is the fact that 36 months unchanged is the longest longest period in living memory of unchanged rates.

Halifax have simply had enough. They have, apparently, 1 million borrowers paying their Standard Variable Rate of 3.50%. When they capped their SVR at Bank Rate + 3% – they never dreamed this would become an issue.

It seems they are now a little disappointed by this state of affairs. They have taken the draconian decision to hike their SVR to 3.99% from 1 May. This is a lovely way of increasing some profits from their existing mortgage book.

Say let’s say these estimates are right and they do have 1 million customers with an average loan of £100,000. An increase of 0.49% on all these loans represents a lovely £49.9 million profit each year, from the touch of a button.

The  excuses behind this change? None heard yet – yet they will all be excuses, the real reason lies above.

What a business to be in when you can print money this easily! Surely a business that could never go wrong.

Lloyds Banking Group (owner of Halifax) is 43% owned by the tax payer…

A quick note on this a few days after the news that Santander are now insisting that all mortgages with loan to values over 50% are set up on a capital repayment basis (ie no interest only).

This news signals either a dramatic worsening of lending conditions in the UK (does Santander really need to rebuild its balance sheet that much?) or that Santander has thrown their toys out of the pram after being leant on.

Why has this happened?

Is Santander in a bit of trouble? This is not just a bit of lending policy adjustment – it’s a serious statement of future lending ability.

Or has someone been leaning on the bank to makes these changes? Rumours circulate that the city regulator is worried about lending money to people who cannot afford to repay it.

Interest Only mortgages are political hot news at the moment. The Vickers report into UK mortgages suggests they should be banned outright.

It wouldn’t take a genius to guess that the regulator might identify Santander as the bank that will lend the highest loan amount on an interest only basis.

It does seem a bit of an overreaction to reduce the band from 75% loan to value to 50% in one go – that is quite some jump.

It remains to be seen whose decision this is – but it’s not good for the new business figures at Santander, a bank which seems very committed to the UK mortgage market.

There is one last possibility – that the bank has got it’s ideas a bit wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time a bank makes a significant policy decision, just to quietly abandon it a few months later.

PLUS: Of course the idea that the government, the banks and the city regulator would gang up to tell us what we can and cannot afford and also to insist we repay our debts could be regarded as a touch rich, after all…

It’s our fault. Just a few weeks after praising Santander for being a proactive, sensible, well thought through lender, this.

With effect from midnight on Thursday, all Santander mortgages with a loan to value over 50% will HAVE to be set up on a repayment basis. That does not mean you have to have a repayment vehicle, or verablly say so.

NO – the whole loan must be capital and interest.

This is bad news. For anyone looking to use bonuses, irregular income, commissions or self employed variable income to pay the loan down over time – no can do any more. Sale of property? No good.

What on earth is this trying to prove, to whom and why? Goodness knows the rationale behind this (we have asked and got only flaky answers so far).

This feels horribly like the never ending lending bad news sceanrios of 2009…

The good news is this – get your application in before then and the old rules apply. We apologise for invoking Sod’s Law.

Firstly – the information that Credit Agencies can disclose to lenders is about to change. To date (as far as we are aware..!) they have been able to provide information about payment history, late payments, outstanding balances and so forth. But now they can also see salary credits and income into UK bank accounts. They can pass this information on.

Blimey.

So no need to prove your income for a Bank, they will know it anyway! (Which sort of makes a nonsense of the Vickers report and the heightened levels of underwriting.) Frankly the Banks don’t like having more staff doing more work. Less work, more profit. With this new facility going forward, it’s easy to see how they will do this.

And yes we did ask if this posed a data protection issue. Apparently not!

Secondly it turns out that not all Banks report information in the same way, or to the same level of detail to the Credit Agencies. One bank in particular reveals much less information. As a result, it’s difficult if you are with that particular Bank to pass anther’s credit score. We can only speculate as to their reasoning for doing this, however an effect is that you end more likely having to go back to them to get a mortgage.

Very Cheeky – No?