Bank of England governor - No pain, no gain.

The Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, has not said the phrase "no pain, no gain" but he is pretty adamant in his opposition to any plans by the UK government to prop up the mortgage market. I read in moneymarketing.co.uk one description of Mr King, which said the Aston Villa fan
was a purist and was not a pragmatic economist.
Some parts of the mortgage market continues to operate. If you are creditworthy, then you will still receive credit. However, it looks like there are real problems at the first-time buyer level, which obviously hits chains.
In recent memory building societies ran a cartel while rationing housing loans. Such things were dismantled in the Thatcherite revolution but remarkably banks and building socities can still move together in the United Kingdom. They all seemed to raise their required deposits at the same time and at the same level. Or was that my mistaken impression?
If the Bank of England governor has his way, there will probably be a slow recovery.
UK Chancellor Alistair Darling wants any recovery to be quicker and it will be interesting to see how far he ignores Mr King.
www.searchifa.co.uk

Will Alistair Darling rescue the mortgage market?

Will British Chancellor Alistair Darling rescue the mortgage market? The Bank of England governor Mervyn King wants the market to recover naturally and does not want any form of state guarantee or help for borrowers. Mr King is insisting that the lenders should still retain the risk of their mortgage loans.
Some observers consider that the Bank of England governor is being too much of a purist and should be more pragmatic.
www.searchifa.co.uk

Postscript: with me writing in September 2009 Darling is still Chancellor, which seems a minor miracle, since he is more or less ignoring the instructions of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Darling wants to be a bit more upfront on forthcoming spending cuts from 2010. However, he could help the mortgage market, which has shown signs of recovery, if he reduce stamp duty rates.

Mervyn King is still Governor of the Bank of England, which is another source of wonderment. He must be surprised that the UK banks seem to be making efforts not to
repossess at the first possible moment. I think the banks should be congratulated for these efforts to keep down residential repossessions.

Santander's Abbey chases HBOS in UK mortgage share.

The specialist publication moneymarketing.co.uk has published the list of top institutions according to UK mortgage loans. In top spot is HBOS, (which operates Halifax and Bank of Scotland) with £73.1bn or an estimated 20.1 per cent of the UK mortgage lending market. Chasing hard is Abbey, which is part of the Spanish banking group Santander with £35.6bn or 9.8 per cent. The list comes from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) and covers 2007.
The Abbey's market share has improved in comparison with the 9.4 per cent level in 2006. The Spanish-owned affiliate admits that the exit of other companies from the UK market has helped.
www.searchifa.co.uk
It would be interesting to get up-to-date figures since Northern Rock would probably have a very different position to last year. In 2007 the Newcastle-based bank had fallen from third to fourth with £29.1bn or estimated market share of 8.1 per cent.
Its new management wants to shrink the loan bank but it might just end up with a load of duff loans. The 2008 first-half results showing losses of half a billion plus were terrible.
The CML figures showed UK building society Nationwide had grown from 5th to 3rd in the ranking with £33.9bn or an estimated mortgage share of 9.3 per cent. My mortgage is with the Nationwide.