Every Cloud

It would be fair to say that the current issues within the housing market have only added to the woes of first time buyers. How does this affect you and what is the future for co-buyers seeking shared ownership solutions?

Does every cloud have a silver lining?

It would be fair to say that the current issues within the housing market have only added to the woes of first time buyers. How does this affect you and what is the future for co-buyers seeking shared ownership solutions?

Discussions round the collapse of both the housing market and the lending market have been wide spread. But where does that now leave first time buyers, co-buyers of those looking to make a move on the housing market. Well sadly the outlook is pretty grim, though not without some consolation.

A study out today has identified that the number of available mortgage deals has dropped by a whopping 76% in just one year. Analysts Mortgage Monitor after reviewing the market and comparing the number of offers available stated that across all sectors there are only about 16,000 different offers currently available. This is a decrease from the 68,000 that were available 12 months ago.

Les Jacobs, Chairman of Mortgage Monitor stated "deals will now be harder to find as lenders can manipulate the market in their favour to make up for their losses", referring of course to the highly publicised American sub-prime crisis. As those who are looking for a mortgage will testify, arrangement fee's in a lot of cases appear to have increased, required deposit sizes have gone up significantly and interests rates don't seem to have dropped.

For those first time buyers having now to pull together a 25% deposit instead of 5 or  10% previously sought, based on the price of the average house this in many cases puts the house purchasing dream further out of reach. Even though house prices (in many areas) seem to be dropping, and that is the upside in this house price lending nightmare, in the large majority of cases it still doesn't balance.

There has though been a lot of talk recently about an increased level of focus  from the government on the development of further shared ownership and co-buying schemes.  All good and promising news, but based on the normal levels of delivery can these be delivered in the volume and locations people need and desire?

Not prepared to wait, pull your resources, take advantage of dropping house prices and co-buy with another like minded co-buyer now.

Posted by Mark on 19/05/2008

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