Mortgage and Real Estate Blog

(Source) Barclays, the seventh-biggest mortgage lender, said that, from today, it was increasing its rates for landlords by up to 0.5 per cent and for homebuyers and remortgagers by up to 0.3 per cent. Abbey and Bradford & Bingley increased their rates last week.

Does this mean that other mortgage lenders will follow? Will there be a ripple in rising lending rates as mortgage lenders across the country begin to raise their rates for landlords and home buyers.

If we do see further increases in lending rates then that could result in fewer housing transactions overall as rising fuel prices will discourage spending and taking on new debt. Home buyers will stop buying homes and landlords will stop offering new rentals. This could affect both the home sales market and the rental market, which doesn’t happen often.

I’d be on the look out for rising lending rates among all the nation’s mortgage companies soon, and if things continue to move in that direction then local housing prices may continue to fall as well.

Falling home prices and rising interest rates will not do much to make people optimistic about the economy.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 9:54 pm and is filed under Banking News, Mortgage News, Real Estate News, economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.