As of 17 June the Nationwide Building Society mortgage rates will be increased by up to 0.5 percent on a number of their products.
New customers taking fixed rate or tracker mortgages, as well as those remortgaging, will face higher interest rates, a situation that the nationwide Building Society is blaming on the increased cost of borrowing between financial institutions. Looking at the broader picture the interest rate on a 2 year fixed rate mortgage with a five percent deposit is around 1.4 percent more than it was just a year ago.
A Nationwide Building Society spokesman defended the changes, explaining how their costs had increased and left them with no other option but to pass on some of that cost to their customers. They were not alone in increasing their rates either, with many other big name lenders increasing their rates too.
The Abbey National has just released figures showing that, for the first half of the year, they had over a quarter of the UK new mortgage market.
A performance at this level means that the Abbey National could take the title of biggest UK mortgage lender depending on the results posted by its closest competitor next week. With an increase of 17 percent compared with the same time last year the improvement is quite remarkable, especially in the current economic climate. In fact a spokesman from the Abbey was pleased to say that they had taken a risk-averse approach to lending, making the huge increase even more noteworthy.
The successful approach taken by the Abbey National has been to look at lower loan to value business, with borrowers basically needing a bigger deposit. Against this growth it will be interesting to see how the main protagonists in the mortgage market plan to win back market share.
A new range of Alliance and Leicester mortgage products has just been announced with flexibility built in to suit different customer needs.
There are different fixed term periods available, fee or no fee mortgages and also a base rate tracker. Some excellent rates are available, with a maximum loan of 75 percent of the property value enabling the Alliance and Leicester to offer these rates. One of the most popular mortgage options is expected to be the 2 year fixed rate with a 5.99 percent interest rate.
One of the Alliance and Leicester tracker mortgages that customers will find interesting is currently quoting a rate of 5.89 percent for the first 2 years, this is base rate plus 0.89 percent. After 2 years the tracker works at base plus 1.49 percent.
