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 study carried out by the Lloyds TSB mortgage department has found that the days of the removal man may be numbered as people take a do it themselves approach.
The bank surveyed their mortgage customers and found that over half of them were planning to move into their new home under their own steam, without employing professionals to move their goods. Lloyds TSB also found that the estate agent was being cut out of 10 percent of home sales as vendors sold privately.
A Lloyds TSB mortgage department advisor commenting on the results suggested that the economic climate could be driving these changes. The average cost of employing a professional removal company is over GBP7,000 so being able to save a lot of that makes good sense.
The latest offer in the mortgage market comes from Lloyds TSB which has introduced a new Airmiles mortgage.
The Lloyds TSB mortgage is not as novel as it sounds, the Airmiles being provided for taking out the mortgage, customers are not able to pay it off using them. The three tear fixed rate offer gives customers 50 Airmiles when signing up plus a further 6,000 when it is completed. The interest rate on the mortgage begins at 5.89 percent depending on applicant circumstances.
As a spokeswoman from Lloyds TSB said, this new mortgage combines a good rate of interest, a decent length fixed term and also a practical and useful reward that customers can use.
