Just to illustrate that Home-Owner-Ism* is rife across the political spectrum, The Daily Mirror plays the "greedy mortgage lenders" card...
Struggling homebuyers are to be given extra protection from greedy mortgage lenders. City watchdogs want to stop banks slapping unfair penalty fees on those who fall behind with repayments. The Financial Services Authority also aims to do more to remove rogue advisers from the industry. It says a clampdown will lessen the misery of repossessions and cut fraud.
There are nearly 400,000 buyers with mortgage arrears, according to the FSA. Its investigation found some lenders imposing penalty fees of up to £50 a month even when borrowers had struck a deal to repay what they owe.
The FSA wants to outlaw this and stop lenders imposing interest on penalty fees and early-repayment charges. Banks will also be obliged to check if customers could benefit from any Government schemes aimed at helping buyers...
Fsa mortgages director Lesley Titcomb said: "Lenders need to be in no doubt of their obligations to customers who fall behind with payments and must realise that such circumstances are not an opportunity to create further profits."
* Disclaimer - not all homeowners are Home-Owner-Ists. That particular term of abuse is reserved for the NIMBYs; the people who prefer taxing wealth creation than taxing property values; and in this instance, those who think that as soon as your name is down at HM Land Registry who achieve an exalted status and deserve special treatment. Would anybody in their right minds demand that banks subsidise tenants who get behind on their rent?
Inconvenient people
2 hours ago
6 comments:
They need each other don't they? Not the mortgage borrower and the mortgage lender, but the FSA and the banking cartel. None of these little posturings are for our benefit at all. They are for the benefit of, in this case the FSA, which having totally failed is now thrasing about and metaphorically shooting people. They'll be a bank counter statement soon, you can betcha.
Banks aren't subsidising them, savers and other borrowers are in the form of increased rates for borrowers and lower rates for savers.
L, yup. It's called "regulatory capture"
TGS, fair point. But "greedy mortgage lenders" are such an easy target aren't they? Although I wouldn't put it past the left wing Home-Owner-Ists at The Mirror to call for a super-tax on bank interest to subsidise "Britain's hard-pressed homeowners".
MW - Regulatory capture - just a version of 'producer capture' eh?
Disclaimer - not all homeowners are Home-Owner-Ists.
Well, that's a relief then. Presumably the ones who already own their own homes outright.
JH, that's unlikely to clinch it either way.
I read a story somewhere about BTLers who had snapped up all the flats in Phase One of a new development in Manchester, who were complaining about Phase Two going ahead because it would 'flood the market'. That's Home-Owner-Ism taken to extremes.
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