Thursday 6 November 2008

"Will interest rate cuts help people?"

The BBC allow four people to tell their stories.

I do wonder, does the BBC hand select self-pitying morons; does it wilfully misrepresent what they say; or are these people really representative of the population as a whole?
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Case 1: After [Ms Bodle's] fixed rate mortgage of 3.99% on £70,000 ended in September she took out a tracker deal with the Halifax, and her repayments rose by £80 a month.

F***ing hell, did she not do a bit of 'stress testing' and see what her finances would look like if mortgage rates went up 8% or 10% (unlikely a couple of years ago, I admit, but if you sign up to a twenty-five year mortgage, wouldn't you at least consider the possibility that rates might go up a few per cent at some stage?). Obviously not, as "when they announced it was one and a half, it was a weight lifted off my shoulders. It will work out as about an extra £50 in my pocket, which can mean the difference losing your house and keeping it."
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Case 2: Tom Sheridan, house builder:

"The housing market has slowed down but hopefully this is the trough of the drop. If the banks can get confidence back up it will help, but we're dealing with small amounts here."

Dream on, buddy.
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Case 3: Mike Eckhoff makes a couple of fair points, actually:

He says that due to his savings he is unable to claim benefits ..."I think... about £8,000 was the interest I received every year. Now the interest rate's cut by 1.5%, I'm going to be down to about £6,000 a year, which is not enough to live on... I'd be much better off if I'd spent the lot and then the government would bail me out. Unfortunately it looks a little bit that the people who haven't thought about the future, they're the ones we look after. But if you've saved money for your future, then you're not in a position to claim anything and no-one seems to bother about you."

Only how did Mike amass his fortune?

Mr Eckhoff lives off £8,000 interest from about £200,000 in savings from the proceeds of his parents' £160,000 house that he sold when they died, and his own life savings.

Right. So he has benefitted enormously from the house price bubble and ought to whine a little less about the bubble bursting.
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Case 4: Mr Okwalinga, 46, and his wife bought their house in Lewisham, south east London, from a housing association four years ago. They are currently living under the threat of eviction after falling behind on their mortgage repayments. He said the opportunity to renegotiate the level of arrears they are paying would help them more than the interest rate cut. The couple took out a £167,000 mortgage on the property, paying £950 a month at first, it soared to £1,400, and has now settled at £1,300 a month.

Same as Ms Brodle, frankly. £950 a month looks like a tad under 6.8% interest+capital, they should have reckoned with an increase.

Further, these people bought their house from a housing association, so I'm assuming that they got a Big Fat Discount from market value, and they're still whining:

"We're hoping there will be new directives to require the mortgage companies to renegotiate to ensure we have a roof over our heads."

F*** off, Mr O! For £1,300 a month you can rent a fairly decent house, I'm sure no worse than the one you've got. That's a roof over your head, isn't it? Do you run a restaurant to make a living or to feed the hungry? Do you let people eat for free if they can't afford to pay?

8 comments:

Lola said...

I am going to get really boring about this mortgage / financial planning stuff - it IS my business tho'.

Interest is money rent. Mortgage repayments are money rent plus a capital repayment.

Rent is rent, whether you rent the money or the property. In fact it is about cost neutral. In other words if you rent a house the rent will be less than the payments on the mortgage. The difference is the capital repayment. Hence house purchase is forced saving.

Now in this recent mad housing market we did the sums for FTB clients and told them to rent and save that difference to accummulate a larger deposit or until the prices fell back and buying made sense. They asked 'supposing they never reduce back?'. 'No problem' I said. 'Keep going with the savings and eventually over 25 years you will build up a sum large enough so that the interest from it will service the rent you will be paying'.

I've done lots of calcs on this (Oh the wonder of the spreadsheet) and it does work.

All you need is a good professional landlord for your long term security, and that's the difficult bit as most of them are rank amateurs just seeking to profit from the capital gain.

End of lecture.

Anonymous said...

Mark, you're not being fair to Mr O, with your comparison, people need roofs over their heads, they don't need to eat...

marksany said...

Interest rates of 12% are seared into my memory from the 80's when I nearly lost my house. As a result I have not got a monster mortgage now.

BTW, who funded the discount Mr.O got from his housing association, and how do I get mine?

Nick von Mises said...

Agreed. It's all very depressing. There's no end of BBC-pandering to the Gordon story and no end to the self-serving self-pitying greedy morons who want to tell their story in lieu of a pay claim against their betters

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, exactly. In reply to "Suppose they never reduce back?" you could have waved this chart under their noses ...

KWM, I'd have written 'rooves' but apparently that's antiquated. Mr & Mrs O run a restaurant, hence the analogy. In any event, eating is just as important as warmth and shelter.

MA, Housing Associations are financed by Ye Olde Taxpayer.

NVM, it's even more depressing than that. The 'home owner' seems to be gradually rising the PC ranks of People Who Deserve Extra Consideration.

Lola said...

MW we did use THAT chart - or rather ones like it, plus other research, but I didn't want to bore you all.

Fact is blokes like me are financial ADVISERS. We don't sell product we sell advice. We adjust the information imbalance for clients in a market. We cannot do anything about monopolies or externalities, but the other factor that stop markets working - information assymetry -is what we can correct. In fact it is what our business is.

This is relevant to the whole mortgage rate / house price bubble / regulation (as nationalisation lite) / free makrket argument.

Neither politicians not banks care about the information assymetry, becuase its existence serves them well, and lets them keep power. New Labour is essentially a deceit machine. It was founded on mis-presentation and spin. It is what it does best. It cannot ever let anyone find out enough information about it because no-one would ever vote for it again. Money supply expansion for example.

Banks need power and mystery. If everyone understood the vulnerability of fractional reserve banking they would never trust them again. If everyone understood how banks actually create money out of thin air and why that can be bad for the citizen if they are badly or laxley supervised, they would never trust them again.

If you combine a deceitful government that is also fiscally and economically illiterate with greedy banks and very loose broad money you get an asset boom.

Our job is to tell clients this and then they can make up their minds whether they want to get involved or not. Other mortgage 'advisers' just enable the deal. Banks are the worst at this.

IMHO one of the key abuses is the marketing phrase used by every mortgage seller - 'Free mortgage ADVICE here'. The two key deceits are 'free' and 'advice'. Both are much abused.

The answer, of course, is not more restrictions but citizen education. Without that we will have boom and bust after boom and bust.

So, having got us to the point of abject failure with negative interest rates (which will go lower), no I do not think these rate cuts will help people. What will help them is better education.

Anonymous said...

Mark, who's KVM? Does he also write sarcastic comments?

BTW, "rooves"? Dude, you're past archaic and into the palaeolithic with that one.

Anonymous said...

Ha ha ha, FFS!