As part of the Mortgage Club Legal and General has added a conveyancing service for customers, something they feel is an essential part of the whole mortgage process.
The view of the Legal and General mortgage spokesman is that effective and efficient conveyancing can make or break the house moving process. If the conveyancing is not done at a good pace then there is a greater likelihood that the deal can fall through, meaning the whole process of finding a property has to begin again.
Legal and General are using the skills and knowledge of intermediaries to manage the conveyancing process, since these financial advisors and legal experts have the experience and knowledge to get all the work done to customers satisfaction.
A survey carried out by the Abbey National mortgage department suggests that the general view is of house prices stopping their fall within the next 12 months.
Speaking to estate agents the Abbey National found 61 percent of them believing that the prices would bottom out within 12 months, while the majority of homeowners expect it to be even quicker, the concensus being around 7 months. Even the most pessimistic homeowner cannot envisage price falls lasting longer than a year.
With this market view in mind around 80 percent of property owners are happy to wait and let the prices fall a little more before committing to a move. The Abbey National also found a small number of people planning to make the most of the price falls by stepping in to buy and grab a bargain.
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.
