Gone are the days where the decision of the front door was Elizabethan or uPVC, composite doors have now hit the market and all other options are being pushed into the distance. This is because composite doors are the best of wooden and uPVC, and can even look like a wooden door with wood grain designs that are more realistic than anything lease you have seen.

These composite doors are made around stronger wooden frames to UPVC ones and allows stronger door furniture as well as having the same level of low maintenance UPVC doors require. As well as this they cab handle sunlight and British weather conditions better than both types of doors. So if you are looking to sell you home, you may want to consider a new front door and you may find the composite doors on offer and more suited to the task than the tradition types out there.

Composite doors have been an unexpected success through the recession, a huge increase in sales and popularity when you would expect sales to drop. This is probably a double benefit, one because they want their home to look better and two because they want to protect what they have from a security point of view. The new composite doors are made in a way that gives them superior strength over standard uPVC doors, so much so that many have got the “Secured By Design” approval from the police and independent body set out to help consumers with the choice of security products.

It is believed that the products chosen can reduce burglary by 50%, certainly something people are looking for in recession time and pound counts and insurance companies are considering raising premiums.

It has been a year or more since we wrote constant content within our blog here and even now we are still unsure, if we should start re-promoting the service. The election is looming and no one of the parties has said the effect it will have on interest rates, except may the conservatives who believe that cutting down debt will keep interest rates low, except we have no idea how many jobs will be lost in the process, bring house prices down.

So it is still a waiting game, even though young families want to get on with their lives and buy their first home, older families want to downgrade and others want to remortgage away form the terrible deal they got 2 years ago. So the general election, state of the Euro and many more issues out there are still getting in the way of the mortgage and financial markets.

So Mortgagebam is starting to push forward again, although very slowly watching the market. It is pointless having lots of mortgage hunters filling ina our forms, if we do not mortgage brokers selling mortgages, at the same time, we don’t want to promise customers for our brokers either.

So it is still a waiting time.

Of course there are 2 ways to look at the issue. If Irish mortgages are going raise the bottom line profits or should we say reduce the losses, then any profitable business transaction should be good for the taxpayer. What the article does not consider is the interest rates and deals being delivered by the competition. In better words these Irish Mortgage deals may be driven by the market, not over enthusiastic leaders on banks, it is mentioned but not investigated.
What is true though, is the ability to offer these fantastic deals within a similar market place. How can it be done in Ireland but not here in the UK, with so many government guarantees?  There are arguments that even with the international slow down hitting cities like Dublin; the financial risk is not as great in Ireland than back in the UK. Let’s see how the consumer and banks react.

The feedback from the media was good even with attempts from demonstrators to mare the conference. Although not achieving everything, most financial advisers felt they could see improvements and confidence for the future, with estimates of later his year before real lending would start again.

The Bank of England kept the lending rates at .5% although it was hard to see why they would take them down to zero. Most mortgage lenders have significantly reduced their rates, although they are still around 3% above the base rate. Never mind though, these are still cheap mortgages if you can get one.

Rumours are also around that Northern Rock are about to offer 90% mortgages and Halifax may lend 100% for certain customers, we have yet to see the customer base this would apply to, but it is unlikely to be open to everyone and may be for existing customers within certain credit limits only.

There was even a small rise in house prices during February, suggesting that we are at the lowest price level. There has never been doubt that there has been a demand for homes, it has been the lack of mortgages that has brought home prices down to the level they are now.
Under normal circumstance, the lighter nights would stimulate the house buying market, so this news may have also come just at the right time, when families get in their cars and drive around the estates to see what property is available.

It is early days and we should not assume there will not be a dip at some point, or that recovery will be swift. But with banks being pretty much protected from any circumstances of bad lending, there does not seem any logical reason not to offer more mortgages and kick start this economy again.

Apart from the so called credit crunch it is believed their is plenty demand fro mortgages it is just the large deposits need to secure a home owner loans that is preventing many from buying especially first time buyers.
The measures put into place to encourage lending has yet to show continuous positive figures to prove it is working and with interest rates down to there lowest level ever, which is great news for borrowers, those trying to save for their deposit are getting very low interest rates in return.

There is a belief that this current trend is unsustainable and it is very possible that more people may pay their mortgage off than take up news ones. The frustrating thing for estate agents is that there are plenty of first time buyers wanting to take advantage of the drop in property prices, but cannot get on to that lender because of the higher deposits required fro security.

Waiting for Februarys stats will see if the trend will continue into 2009, or banks are at last lending more as promised.

The Halifax house price index is published each month based on its own trading figures, which of course could be different for other mortgage lenders.  What is sure that Februarys figures will be a point of interest, either to dispel January figures as a blip or an indication that maybe some house prices had not reached there lowest level.
There were also comments stating that there were much fewer homes on the market at the moment, which in itself may have influenced a small price increase. There is also the human element, a new year and a new start and those who may have been put off from last years doom and gloom may have decided now was the time to buy.

However a mixed message came from small businesses who are saying it is all good and well reducing interest rates, but many banks are just not lending to certain business types or in fact increasing interest rates because they feel they are too much of a risk. The underlying message is good for existing borrowers, but not yet teh solution for first time buyers.

Many first time buyers are still no too impressed, with some mortgages requiring a 40% deposit. Of course the lower interest rates are also affecting the savers, and for many first time home buyers, they are a saver before a buyer.
A suggestion on a major national news channel yesterday was for the government to offer an interest free loan to cover the deposits required by mortgage lenders, to get those looking for a home into the market much quicker. The criticism was the interest rate cut is a good step, but probably will make little difference to last months already very low cut. The government needs new initiatives, was the suggestion, to cover the reasons why banks are just not lending money, was the comments.

There was some truth in that at the time, you could get a Spanish mortgage for around 2.5% where the interest rates at home were somewhere around the 4.5% at the time. But this has backfired big style for those who took that option. Firstly the interest rates in Spain gradually caught up with those in the UK and continued to do so as they rose to 7% or so. The bad news is, Spanish mortgages have not reduced like they have here in the UK, with no government bail outs to the level we have with Bank Of England, so mortgages have doubled and more in only a few years. If that was not enough the drop in sterling has increased mortgages another 40% or so again, as Spanish mortgages have to be paid in Euros not the pound, 3 years ago you could almost get 1.5 Euros to the pound, now you are lucky if you can get 1.09 Euros to the pound.

The results are that many Brits are just handing their keys in and walking away, losing a considerable amount of money. The language difference and not having access to mortgage advice or even a lack of mortgage advisers means that many Brits do not know who to talk to or even if their are rescue packages out there. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out if 1 million Brits come home, there will be a huge drop in income in Spain and much of its infrastructure has relied on foreign investment.

Ironically some Brits may be in a better situation to sell their property than last year. The strong Euro may help them sell their Spanish home to a new owner from a country that deal in Euros, sell it cheaper than they bought it for, but because the Euro is so strong actually come away with more in Sterling than the house was bought for. For example 100 Euros is worth the same as 150 Euros was 3 years ago in sterling. So if you bought a house for 150,000 Euros, roughly £1000,000 sterling 3 years ago, you could sell that house now for around 110,000 Euros now to get the same back in sterling.

The issue here is we don’t here this on TV. We are sure many Brits are not aware of this and so the Brits could sell their home cheaper than any other European owner, pay off the mortgage and walk away in a better position than handing the keys in.