mortgage
It’s a sad fact that over 19,000 homes were repossessed in the first half of this year, and with the way things are going, that figure should be easily surpassed during this second half.
So if you’re struggling to pay your mortgage, what should you do? Here are 7 tips (plus a bonus tip) that will help you out.
So, you may have heard that interest rates have been cut by 0.5% today, in an announcement that was made a day earlier than expected.
How has the rate cut affected your mortgage?
The big story of the day is the 1-year change to stamp duty announced by the Government.
In a bid to stimulate some interest in the housing market, the lowest threshold for paying stamp duty has been raised from £125,000 to £175,000 until September next year.
A couple of weeks ago Alistair Darling appeared to suggest there may be plans afoot to change the way stamp duty was charged, causing widespread uncertainty in the housing market as people waited for confirmation.
Looks like the Chancellor, Alistair Darling is in a bit of a mess over possible changes to stamp duty.
FreeMoneyFinance recently asked are you feeling any economic pain, so I thought I’d look at the same subject from a UK perspective, and poll Money Watch readers on whether you are feeling the effects of the credit crunch yet? When I say crunch here, I’m using the term loosely, as I’m referring to more than […]
If you’d asked me a few months ago what the best way to get a new mortgage was, I’d have told you to find yourself an independent mortgage broker, and let them do the hard work for you. With the credit crunch hitting the mortgage market hard, lenders had been withdrawing mortgage rates left right […]
Yesterday I talked about haggling for discounts and mentioned my biggest discount; getting £4,000 off the price of our house. As John pointed out in the comments, this probably wasn’t the greatest deal ever done, as the average house apparently sells for 93% of the asking price, whereas we probably paid about 97% of the […]
If you’re wondering how we ended up with the credit crunch, following the problems with sub-prime mortgage lending in the US, then this funny set of slides might help you understand. Beware, there is some adult language, but it’s worth going through the full 40-odd images for a good chuckle. The Sub-Prime Primer Credit for […]
We’re all aware of the increasing prices of food, fuel etc., as well as the difficulty in finding low mortgage rates (despite the Bank of England base rate falling recently, we can blame the credit crunch for the tougher borrowing conditions). One of the worries is that as these costs increase, more and more people […]