A happy mortgage customer NR

tiff

In 2005 we remortgaged with NR, fixed at 4.89% for 15 years with 18 years left to go. I could kiss my mortgage adviser and am so sorry others are in such predicaments because it could so easily have been us.

Scousebird_2

I wish more people could be telling us this. I am very glad you are secure, especially on todays climate.

Ian_Griffiths_Halifax

Northern Rock are a very good company in my opinion, and get a lot of flack for the failings of others.

I did a 5 Year Fixed Rate 18 months ago for a client and he's about to move house.

Not only is he able to port the mortgage to the new property, but he can increase the mortgage on the same rate!

He's going from approx £55,000 to £250,000 on a rate of just over 5%.

beingjdc

Ian_Griffiths_Halifax wrote: »

Northern Rock are a very good company in my opinion, and get a lot of flack for the failings of others.

They were a very generous company (to attract customers) - I'm not sure that's the same thing as being a good company - especially now that their generosity is coming out of our taxes!

Ian_Griffiths_Halifax

Innovative rather than generous I'd say.

beingjdc

Ian_Griffiths_Halifax wrote: »

Innovative rather than generous I'd say.

It's not really innovative to lend someone a higher multiple of their salary than usual, or a larger percentage of the value of the property, or at a low fixed rate.

It's just aggressive pricing - oldest trick in the book - the problem with it is if you're borrowing short and lending long, you're very vulnerable to changes in market conditions. Ditto if you're packaging up mortgages that aren't likely to be profitable in the long-term, in the hope of selling them on to people who don't realise that.

While you can claim 'nobody could foresee the change in the international money market for mortgage-backed securities', lots of us did - at least as soon as US mortgage defaults started to rocket in 2005 - and in any case they always come around eventually, there's no such thing as a free lunch in the financial markets, it's classic LTCM-style hubris to think there is.

Ian_Griffiths_Halifax

Northern Rock are one of very few companies who would provide a good rate with the ability to make unlimited overpayments during a redemption penalty period, so long as the entire mortgage wasn't redeemed, without it needing to be a current account type mortgage.

Most would only allow a certain amount of say 5-10% which is sufficient for most people.

They started to get greedy by charging high arrangement fees and up front admin fees on top of high valuation fees, but the deals were still good when taking all things into account.

They weren't by any stretch of the imagination, the only company lending high income multiples and they lent less as a SECURED mortgage than many lenders as they went up to a maximum 95%, whereas others went to 97%, 100%, 105% or even 110% secured.

You have some good points, but I'm just saying that they have and still are a good company in my opinion.

beingjdc

Ian_Griffiths_Halifax wrote: »

They weren't by any stretch of the imagination, the only company lending high income multiples and they lent less as a SECURED mortgage than many lenders as they went up to a maximum 95%, whereas others went to 97%, 100%, 105% or even 110% secured.

True, but they went up to 125% total - isn't lending Unsecured arguably riskier than lending Secured?

Point is, they ran out of cash, they're causing people all sorts of suffering as they snap back to more normal interest rates from the artificially low fixes of a few years ago, they've wiped out their shareholders, and their continued operation at all is only possible thanks to taxpayers' money. None of those things are on my criteria for finding a good company.

Ian_Griffiths_Halifax

beingjdc wrote: »

True, but they went up to 125% total - isn't lending Unsecured arguably riskier than lending Secured?

Most people borrowed the extra to pay off other debts thereby reducing their outgoings. A responsible action so long as you don't run the debt back up again. Either that or to buy things which would have normally have been put on finance. You had to have the very best of credit ratings to get the Together Mortgage and that is reflected in the fact that until they started to encourage customers away in order to repay their debt to the Government (which they are on schedule to do early I believe), they had one of the lowest Arrears %ages of all lenders.

beingjdc wrote: »

Point is, they ran out of cash, they're causing people all sorts of suffering as they snap back to more normal interest rates from the artificially low fixes of a few years ago, they've wiped out their shareholders, and their continued operation at all is only possible thanks to taxpayers' money. None of those things are on my criteria for finding a good company.

They aren't causing people all sorts of suffering, mortgage availablity in general is!

Their continued operation was possible thanks to taxpayers money, who will get it back, and was made available as the Government saw that they were a good risk.

Wutang_2

Ian_Griffiths_Halifax wrote: »

Most people borrowed the extra to pay off other debts thereby reducing their outgoings. A responsible action so long as you don't run the debt back up again. Either that or to buy things which would have normally have been put on finance. You had to have the very best of credit ratings to get the Together Mortgage and that is reflected in the fact that until they started to encourage customers away in order to repay their debt to the Government (which they are on schedule to do early I believe), they had one of the lowest Arrears %ages of all lenders.

actually most NR together customers said they would pay off the debt but most didnt - hence why so many people come on here and explain how they have negative equity and also lots of outstanding cards and loans. the mortgage offer never made it a condition

Ian_Griffiths_Halifax

I haven't seen any posts from people who said they haven't paid off debts they had said they were going to? Could you give me a link?

I suspect that many weren't educated by their adviser if that were true.