Thetownend.com

Just been cut by 1.5%, Base Rate is now 3%.

Please let my mortgage company pass it on to me.

Happy days.

Happy days indeed, i love my tracker mortgage, it has dropped 3.6% in less than a year

thats good, they were predicting 0.5%.

Shame I'm on a fixed mortgage.  :(

i have a base rate tracker too.fucking well happy.

No chance...they have their profits and pensions to protect...1/4 of a % passed on to you at BEST.

Can't imagine there's too much profit left! But you're spot on, anyone who thinks they're gonna see all of that is in dreamland.

Believe me my mortgage company will pass on the whole 1.5%

so will mine. went down by the 0.5 percent this month.will see the 1.5 reduction next month.base rate trackers have to track the bank of england base rate.

So what will this mean for the rest of the economy then?

I'm in dreamland then Dave as are other people on tracker mortgages.  If you're on a tracker your mortgage company will track your mortgage rate with the base rate (subject to your terms and conditions).  If you're a lazy arse who's stuck on a Standard Variable Rate then you may not see anything like a 1.5% drop, which whilst is a shame, really highlights the need to get some decent advice and get yourself on to a decent mortgage.

Pretty reasonable to me.

My fixed period is up in a couple of months, the way the rates seem to be going I'm not going to bother going onto another fixed rate just yet, I'll just let it fall onto the BMR because that'll be cheaper than my current fixed rate.

Interesting comment on the BBC site this morning.  The UK mortgage market is split roughly:

50%  Fixed rate mortgages
40%  Tracker mortgages
10%  Variable rate mortgages

So all the press comment concerning whether banks are passing savings on to borrowers impacts only 10% of the mortgage market.

Our current deal is a lifetime tracker, so happy with the announcement.  (At long last, the MPC has woken up - but I'm worried they have left it too late.)  All this, however, is the silver lining to a very black cloud, and will mean nothing if redundancy strikes.  Let's hope those green shoots appear as early in 2009 as possible...because there are going to be a lot of casualties on the way.

It does make you laugh, the BOE drops rates big time the last couple of months but there isn't a lot of point as the banks (and building society) will not pass on these rates to the customers, and then they charge high "reservation" fee's as well.

They in themselves are not helping to get the housing market back on track.

I dunno aboutt that Sam, SVR's aren't falling to well at present, new app trackers are tracking at a higher rate (Nationwide anounced for new mortgages they will track at 1.8% above base rate).

Depends on your current rate I suppose but I wouldn't have thought there will be that much to be gained sitting on the standard variable for a while.

(Have to say though mortgages aren't really a forté of mine)

my mortgage was at a reduced rate of +.25% above base rate until last september on a two year deal.that came to an end and i found nothing that could beat what it was going up to on variable rate which is +.75% above base rate so i stuck with it.im happy now as my rate will be 3.75% from next month on a variable base rate tracker.if rates start going the other way i'll just remortgage again.

It's all about the LIBOR man, which is begining to fall, which SHOULD mean banks may start offering slightly better deals.

I'll have to see what the new deals come down to when the banks start passing (some of) the cuts on. My current deal is 5.4% so anything around that I'd be happy with.

Why did I read "SVR's" as Stevie Ray Vaugans?

Not sure Si, might have something to do with the initials "SVR" use the same letters as the first letters of each of the words in "Stevie Ray Vaugans" but in a slightly different order.

As as the announcement was made, nationwide has withdrawn their tracker mortgages for new customers!! Greed, greed, greed....

Nationwides a Mutual Society though, so doesn't profit for shareholders like a bank.

My nice 0.49% above Base Rate Tracker is bearing some fruit, only took it out in May!  That's about £160 knocked off my mortgage payment in 2 months.  Cracking, plus as it's not got a tie in, I can continue to keep a close on the market conditions should I ever need to react to rising rates.

Bugger for savers mind.

Samdy, hsbc and the yorkshire may be worth a call now

Umpty hundred billion quid of my money to prop up these greedy failures who are still paying themselves massive bonuses while our kids starve in the streets and all we get is a should? I'll give you a should - should have nationalised the whole lot of them when they came round with the begging bowl. At gunpoint.

Cant blame the goverment for the bonus the greedy bastards get.

That's not greed greed greed.  That's Nationwide judging trackers not to be profitable enough.  The base rate has dropped by 2% in one month one day, the libor rate hasn't therefore the rate that NW has to fund mortgages hasn't fallen anywhere as near as much as the base rate, meaning it doesn't make economical sense to continue to offer these loans.  A way around this would be to offer a tracker 3% above base, but who in their right mind would buy that?

Not greed greed greed, more like sense sense sense.

PS I don't work for NW, or work in a company that offers mortgages so no vested interest. I don't mind banks, building societies getting it in the neck when it's called for, but it's not on this particular subject i.e. withdrawing trackers.

Thanks for working that one out for me.

No bother Si!!

I'm surprised you showed any interest in my post at all.

Tch! If they'd nationalised them properly, instead of pissing about "recaptialising" them (ie handing over loads of our cash so they could cover up their fuck-ups), then the government would be able to ensure interest rate cuts get passed on, ensure no bonuses were paid to the greedy bastards ever, and force them to work for the rest of their lives on national minimum wage by way of repaying their debt to society. At gunpoint.

eh?  why d'ya say that Si?

I should have probably tracked my previous posts to see if you'd ever replied and base my assumption on that, but I get the feeling you don't rate my posts at all.

I'll keep myself logged in at the index page to see if you reply again.

Nah man, apologies if I gave you that impression fella, not intentional at all!!

Really, all I was doing was playing geek games and writing loads of words mentioned in this thread in one post, because you missed my initial (awful) play on the word 'interest'.

 :)

Just so you all know, Miss Angry loves playing geek games. If you give her a PM she'll definitely play some with you.

Haha! Si Pie paranoia. I think your posts are great......no really I do.

I know how much you value my opinion.

Spoken like a true Socialist! :)

Yaay! Finally got a bite. Knew I could rely on you, you old bedsheet-wearer, you :fishing:

Have you played any geek games with Miss Angry yet?

I'm too busy playing yeti games with Dozno9 and Dazzza, to be arsed with that kind of carry on.

Am I the only one who replies to those automatic notification messages you get when someone takes your title? I offered Dozno out for a fight, but he still keeps coming back.

I replied once to ask Dazza to stop topping my score... he ignored me.

Simon stop picking on me, is it because i called you a geek?

Yeah, he always ignores me. It won't stop me though.

Hehe, I just called him a cunt. He'll never guess it was me.

Speaking of the KKK, I hear the Head Gardener at the Whitehouse has been dismissed from his post for alledgedly being a member of the KKK.

He denies the allegation saying "I only asked where the spade was"....

I did reply Angry just not to Spacey's abuse and that git has gone and taken my bloody seagull score this morning.

Fuck me are you a socilst miner or something? You clearly have no idea how the banking system works. As many have said before it is all about the ibor rate untill that falls forget about any cuts.

With regard the bail out the money has to be repaid within a certain time scale and some of the goverment money has been loaned to the banks at a rate of 12%. Providing none of the banks lent to don't go bust big time then the goverment actuly stands to make money out of the deal. But no doubt you are a daily mail reader and as such can't see past the big headlines to the facts.

Woosh! :fishing:

What the fuck is the point? Twat.

Why fish? then when you get a reaction post a little fishy sign? You are like a little kid playing with traffic, lets hope someone knocks you down.

I have to be honest, as a sufferer of replying to fishin posts, I don't really get them.  Fair enough if they're funny points, or a a decent wind up, but putting an opinion down and then just putting fishin after it seems a bit pointless to me.

I assuming the banks will be quick enough to pass on the cut in interest rates to people who save and try to live within their means.

Oh, come on, it was an obvious joke post that you just didn't get. Now please tidy all those toys up and put them back in the pram before someone trips over them.

It was an obvious joke to be fair, Arthur Scargill couldn't have composed a more nationalisation inspired post.

Actually, Paul's fishing post actually sounds OK to me - nothing wrong with it. Apart from the "at gunpoint" bit - I'd have said shoving live lobsters down their shreddies. 

Not sure what we are all moaning about ??

We were all VERY happy to take the money when it was offered to us at silly rates and silly amounts !!

Now it's gone a bit pear shaped everyone's moaning :)

Not everyone's moaning Shagsheeper.

Actually - bollocks to it - I haven't got a tracker mortgage so I might have a moan :)

Well, quite. But I apologise for using the fishing smilie thingy as it wasn't really a fishing post in the proper sense, just a joke that GFM didn't get. Hence the Woosh!

Hahahaha.

Even I got what Davis was on about I'm only marginally more intelligent than you ( i.e. not a total eejit).

Hey Thicko - wrong again ???

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7716086.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7716086.stm)

You got issues mate

nope - not at all DRS....

I guess I should let the Ironside thing go - fair enough .... he was wrong though :)

Thought this was worth a bump, fair play to Nationwide and Halifax for not enforcing their "tracker floors", means a lot of people will be saving even more thanks to the latest 1% cut!!

Hurrah!!!!

Thought I heard on the radio this morning that halifax weren't passing on the 1%??

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7766364.stm

Halifax aren't passing on the full 1% to variable rate mortgagors, however Halifax and NW both have floors of 2.75% on their tracker mortgages, however they both have decided to not impose this floor and allow customers with trackers to receive the full 1% rate cut on their mortgages.

Without being harsh if you have a variable you should have been told by your mortgage adviser that building societies don't have to pass on rate cuts, it's up to them, which is why variable rate mortgages are cheap, fees wise.  A tracker on the other hand tracks rate changes (at a set rate above, or below if discount tracker) contractually, unless you hit the floor (which they haven;t imposed).  These mortgages cost more to set up, you'd have to pay a fee for a decent tracker.  So it's a case of you pay for what you get really.

i'm happy with it.could go again by half a % next month.

Japan's base rate is at 0.3% at the moment, that's crazy.

It'd be interesting to see if they impose they collar then though, wouldn't blame them if they did as the LIBOR isn't that low.  Watching Question Time last night it's almost as if some people expect the banks to make no money on these loans.

Re: Japan it's not that crazy when you consider how much the property market's suffered in recent years over there.  Basically if you own a property in Japan you've had to put up with years of losing value on your property, it just wasn't worth owning a house for example, you'd have been better off renting.  Hence the rather attractive interest rates.

A view from inside the industry - I know that last week Nationwide & Halifax were seeking a legal opinion on their Collars. Nationwides is at 2.75% base rate & Halifax have theirs at 3%.
It may well be that the legal bods said they can't do it, which is why they passed on the full amount. That would apply in particular to the Halifax because they took that bit out off their KFI's (Illustrations) a while ago after the FSA told them to make it shorter.
Having said that I have some of my clients on a rate that tracks BELOW the base rate, (0.39%) so it would be interesting to see what will happen if it does fall to 0.3%. Does that mean the lenders have to pay the borrower interest !?
The main driver though with rates is the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) which is the rate that banks lend to each other. That has fallen since Novembers cut, by about 1 %, hence lenders have cut standard variable rates but not by the whole amount. If LIBOR continues to fall that will be the best news, & will lead to a fall in SVR's & new fixed rates.
Unfortunately the good rates now available for NEW borrowers are only if you have a lot of equity or big deposit (40%+). Whilst funds are still short (And they will be until the banks pay off the Government & the credit squeeze ends) then lenders will no doubt offer good rates but only to low risk customers with squeeky clean records & large deposits.

In May, with my current deal running out and facing a hefty rise in payments, I remortgaged with HSBC on a 0.48% above Base Rate Tracker, then 5.48%.  I went for it on the basis I thought downwards moves were more likely in the next 2 years than up and it's got absolutely no tie in period and is always 0.48% above, plus the fees were £600.  It was a cracker of deal as it turns out, now £240 lower a month than only 7 months ago.  The trick is budget a rise into the calculation before taking it I suppose, knowing you can cope with it going up.  As I have jack shit in savings, the current downturn is working out quite nicely for me.

I know nothing about mortgages but is that a standard(ish) deal and who was dishing those out?

Thankfully I have a mate pretty high up in Barclays that tipped me off before things crashed and I got in on a cushdy tracker effort. 

I have long suspected you are 'The Man' Rob. This confirms it 8)

Phil S..can you just confirm what I already know...me and Mrs Oooh! re-did our mortgage back in June time...our initial deal had come to an end. We went for a fixed rate of 5 point something over 3 years.

I guess there's no way out of that really is there? It was a good deal at the time and we made a decision on the information available at the time.. it's always nice to be paying a bit less though isn't it? I don't suppose there's any way out of it really is there?

P.S. Don't worry, I'm not suicidal or owt 8)

I have to say I'm take note of the small print and the first I saw of the "collar" (your interest rate can only go down to 4.19% was when we got our first letter telling us our interest rate had been cut.

Can't for a minute think that if the rate ever got that low Phil the companies would credit the mortgage account holders, you can't go lower than zero (not that we're likely to get down to jap IR levels).

OST there's no way out of a fixed rate mortgage unless you want to pay x amount in redemption fees, you're stuck there fella.

Meh! I kind of knew that. That's the gamble. As I said, I'm not suicidal or owt 8)

That's what I expect.  They should pass on the rate cut, the thieving bastards.  Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.

Is the jury still out on whether the collars / floors are legal or not? A story on the BBC website gave the impression the FSA had told them they were most likely unenforceable as they weren't in the key fact illustrations and that Halifax (and some others) had just given up on it and basically removed the clause permanently.

I'm on a base rate +0.79% with the Halifax, so I'm laughing all the way to the Leeds at the moment. I was happy enough with the 3% floor, you can't really complain with paying 3.79% can you? Then Thursday morning I find out Halifax have dropped the floor clause, then at lunch time the base rate drops another 1%.

They didn't mention the floor to me when I took out the mortgage (I'd been on a fixed rate, then standard variable) which was all done over the phone and who reads the small print in the terms? But even if I'd known I'd of still taken the mortgage, so I'm in two minds as to whether I'd be annoyed if they did implement it or not.

I reckon dropping the base rate is the best chance of getting the economy going again. Every 1% drop puts another £100 or so in the pockets of 50% of the mortgage holders in the country, which is a lot more money than anything else they've done so far.

Just checked it was with the Halifax in April 2007, & another was with Alliance & leicester the same month

Certainly a bit more effective than wasting 12 billion on cutting 17.5% off of VAT. !

i wish they had cut 17.5% of VAT!!  THE 2.5% they cut is hugely beneficial and will save me and my business about 20 grand a year.

No they shouldn't Donkey, as they themselves do not get the funds to fund mortgages on a base rate level, they use the LIBOR, which does not fall in line with the BoE base rate.  It's like me gettin a loan at 5% to then lend to you at 6%, the BoE then reduce the interest rate to 3% but my interest rate doesn't fall, i'd still have to charge you 6%, or at least above 5% to make me money, which is what it's all about.

(I realise you may be fishing but some who read this may genuinely have that view)

Lets not forget that it is the banks themselves that have caused the problems to a large degree. They've been bailed out and supported by public money so personally I don't think they should be making a penny in profit until they've paid it back and sorted themselves out. I have absolutely zero sympathy for them.

Disagree they are businesses, who have a duty to their shareholders, employees and customers, they can't just give money away.  Don't forget the customers themselves have to shoulder some of the blame, and so do their advisers to some extent.  I'm sure Phil S knows many advisers who have increased their customers incomes to get them extra borrowing.

People need to start taking some responsibility for their actions, many people took the cheap option by going on a variable and now are not getting the full benefit of having opted for a tracker.  It's the same when the floods happened, those with insurance claimed, those without moaned to the government, watchdogs and got bailed out.  I'm not saying the poor should be left to fester but people need to start making proper plans and act like grown ups.

Did anyone see that programme called the great bank robbery, about a student taking out 4 different accounts and maxing the overdrafts in the space of 48 hours. Obviously she paid it back the next day because she wasn't stupid, but it just goes to show how shit the banks are at lending money.

Or, on the other hand, how idiotic people can be.

I thought thats what the Governement did now. 

Seems that way.

That was the other point of the show. Some student had borrowed £40k from several banks, whilst a student, then had to go bankrupt in the end.

The most poignant part was Halifax and Lloyds TSB, who have been given taxpayers money to stay afloat, not bothering to check if she had any other student accounts.

You can blame people for borrowing too much and exploiting the system, but if you ever have the pleasure of looking at larger a bank's lending system, especially when the government has guaranteed money towards it, it's not very prudent.

I just don't think the banks are feeling enough pain. If it wasn't for the government support a lot more would of gone under, except the government couldn't let this happen and had to bail them out. Whilst they've lost a lot of money, the shareholders are left with something solely as a result of the government bail out.

But what about all the people who have had their homes repossessed or been made bankrupt. They haven't been bailed out or supported to the same degree. Why not? They have been no more irresponsible than the banks.

Its made worse by the massive bonus and dividend payments these same banks were paying up until a year ago (or even more recently in some cases). How can they go from massive profits to bankruptcy? Why weren't they retaining those profits to make their business more solid.

Another 0.5% today then and my lender (Nationwide) have already promised to pass on the full rate cut. Luverly jubberly.

have they? on the radio a couple of days ago it said they wouldn't be passing any more drops in interest on to mortgage borrowers.must have changed since then?

No cut in IR for me with the Nationwide, as my mortgage was taken out prior to 1/12/08.  Oh well, still well happy though as my mortgage is cheap as chips at the moment!!

Informazione = http://www.nationwide.co.uk/popup/rate_cut.htm?source=nationwide&campaign=homepage&execution=ratecut_lhs_08012009

We have a tracker mortgage with the Woolwich and our mortgage payments are now £500/month better less than they were just a few months ago.  Quite happy with that.

Rate cuts always take time to feed through, so it will be interesting to see the extent to which they help the economy in the coming months.  Otherwise, looks as if the government will be starting up the printing press (metaphorically speaking).

i wish they'd stop doing this! it's causing havoc with ISA's!!!!

yeah they should just make it 0% and be done with it

that's clearly what i meant arriba, i was being flippant anyway.

tut tut

Your stupid staff cause havoc with ISAs...

that's also a factor  8)