New mortgage rules implemented at the weekend were already affecting the market, says a firm of national surveyors.
According to Connells Survey & Valuation, the total number of property valuations dropped by 9% between February and March, leaving activity at levels 10% below March 2013.
John Bagshaw, corporate services director at the firm, said: “March is usually a strong month for valuations, but that just didn’t apply this year.
“Lenders have had to devote serious time and resources, gearing up for a radically different way of assessing mortgage applications.
“This has rapidly fed through into the valuations industry, resulting in a sharp dip in the number of completed valuations.”
He said valuations for home movers were down by 2% in March – a 6% annual fall – and for first-time buyers were down by 7% on the month before, representing an annual drop of 11%.
Remortgage valuations also fell sharply in March from 35% of all valuations to 23%.
The Mortgage Market Review (MMR) means that lenders and brokers must ask more intrusive questions of applicants, including their spending habits.
Reportedly, some of the questions being asked include:
- How often do you have friends over for dinner and do you have steak?
- What is your monthly expenditure on pet food?
- What is your monthly expenditure on dry cleaning?
- When you move will you continue to pay £21 per month for milk delivery?
Comments (6)
must also be packaged with a glossy
cover such as efficient seo, an eye pleasing blog design and pleasant language.relevance and purpose of contentyou have created a blog with a purpose and your readers also browse through your blog posts with some purpose.therefore, it definitely helps…
<strong>links from similar sites in your field.</strong>
if you sell cars, a link from a computer software site will be of no use to you at all.one of the best ways of getting links is to write articles and get them published on websites such as the one
<strong>the 5 tips used:1) consistent content 2)</strong>
category that will continue to be in high demand 3) guest blogging 4) blog meme 5) social connecting with others and commentingif you associate your site with the above 5 tips and be consistent with it, you should see an increase
<strong>published which show the publishers for your</strong>
niche. one of the best is the writer's market directories published by f+w media, inc. (aka the publishers of writer's digest magazine). these directories vary by market and publisher. however, generally speaking they provide the name, address, conta…
Most people know roughly what their income is monthly and when it comes in as do they know what the big bills are and when they need paid. They may be in a position to put some money away in savings and investments and then the rest is disposable! ie spend the rest!
Most people do likewise and also historically tighten their belt when purchasing a new home.
I am all for the lenders ensuring affordability but the new guidelines are too much.
After all they are checking we can afford our mortgages when they, themselves put up the rates to make their products more expensive.
Most people do not budget properly. They have no idea how much they spend on various goods or services. These questions are the sort that are asked by credit card lenders to assess ability to pay or when borrowers fail to pay, to make an assessment on how much they can afford to pay on a monthly basis in the future.
The more that we as consumers spend time on personal inventory and knowing exactly where our money goes, through accurately budgeting, then the less likely people will get into serious debt problems.
Making an accurate assessment of ability to pay mortgage payments, and assisting people to consider properly budgeting, will result in a little short-term pain but will provide a long term gain – they will not lose their home when interest rates go up, as they will.