HSBC targets the FTB

Lokolo

DervProf wrote: »

I would have liked to pay 4.59% during the lifetime of my mortgage.

And as some would probably point out, paying 4.59% is going to be cheaper than renting in most cases.

Seems like some of you want your cake and eat it too.

If the banks offered lower rates, then savers would suffer more. Not only that, lower rates will simply fuel HPI which will increase the future requirement for continual low rates and higher amounts of lending. If you cast your mind back to just 4 years ago, you'll see where that may lead.

The base rate is 0.5%, base rate a few years ago was 5%. + 4.09% would means then I would have been paying around 9% - was that a good deal back then? I highly doubt it!

The rates they are offering are crap, simple as. I'm not trying to have my cake and eat it, I want to have a reasonably priced cake, and eat it

DervProf wrote: »

Fair enough. Like any "free market" product, there will be good deals, not so good deals, and bad deals. If HSBC are trying to attract customers with a bad deal, then they are probably not going to be very successful.

If we talk about MSErs they would fail entirely, but we live in Britain and there sure are some stupid/lazy people out there who won't search for the best deal

DervProf

Lokolo wrote: »

The base rate is 0.5%, base rate a few years ago was 5%. + 4.09% would means then I would have been paying around 9% - was that a good deal back then? I highly doubt it!

The rates they are offering are crap, simple as. I'm not trying to have my cake and eat it, I want to have a reasonably priced cake, and eat it

As you say, base rate a few years back was ~5% and I recall SVRs being around base + ~1.5%, meaning that SVRs were around 6.5% and "deals" may have been around 5%. Times have changed, the economy is in a mess, and the banks are recapitalising. The BoE may have slashed rates to 0.5%, but it is the banks who call the shots. I didn't hear too many FTBers and existing mortgage holders complaining a few years back when the banks were offering all sorts of wizzo mortgage deals that helped fuel a house price boom. I suspected that the banks would get themselves into trouble, but when I mentioned this to a few people they simply implied that I didn't know what i was talking about, and returned to working out how much their house had gone up in the past month. The banks did get into trouble, and it is both borrowers and savers who are paying the price.