1. Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey recently forecast that there could be a series of mortgage rate reductions in 2025. How many has he predicted?
2. The average value of a UK mortgage in the second quarter of 2024 was how much?
3. According to UK Finance, the total value of UK mortgage lending in 2024 will fall by about 5% to:
4. Rightmove is predicting 2025 to be a busy year with an expected number of completions in excess of 1 million. The number they’re forecasting is:
5. The average UK first time buyer's house price currently sits below the new £300,000 Stamp Duty Tax threshold. In what percentage of local authorities does this represent?
Question 1. B
Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey recently predicted that there could be as many as 4 mortgage rate reductions in 2025, each one seeing a drop of a quarter of 1% each time, in effect a full 1% next year.
Question 2. C
Latest mortgage statistics from Find.Com mortgage reveal that the average value of a new mortgage in 2024 was £185,165.
Question 3. B
According to UK Finance total lending on mortgages is expected to emerge at £215 billion. This is actually a slight drop on the previous year of around 5%.
Question 4. B
A report by Today's Conveyancer carries a story stating that Rightmove is predicting 2025 to be a very busy year, with around 1.5 million transactions. The average number of properties for sale per estate agent branch is now at its highest in 10 years for the December period.
Question 5. C
According to a report by Your Money, 68% of local authorities will be unaffected by the changes in Stamp Duty coming into effect on April 1. However, first time buyers in 31% of local councils will see their Stamp Duty payments rise due to the higher value of properties in these areas. Four such London councils where first time buyers will be affected include Kingston, Wandsworth, Richmond and Hackney.
According to the latest property market predictions from The Guardian, the start to 2025 is going to be busy, largely because of the changes in Stamp Duty which, as our quiz has shown, is going to lead a buying frenzy among first time buyers. Obviously the April 1 deadline is going to concentrate minds in areas where buyers will be affected by the change.
With the continued imbalance between supply and demand, there will continue to be an upward pressure on house prices but, as usual, buyers will be looking for value for money. Which means that expert valuations remain as important as ever.
With high levels of market activity, and the predictions of a succession of mortgage rate reductions, organisation is critical for mortgage advisers, not just in managing the wealth of competing rate offers emerging from mortgage lenders, but to ensure that the advice you give meets the FCA regulations around compliance and consumer duty.
By investing in the Binder mortgage adviser portal, we can bring a whole new level of workflow management to your business with a range of game-changing features that we’ve designed to help you overcome the time pressures created by the level of detail required to tick so many regulatory and client satisfaction boxes.
“We’re really ambitious about what we want to achieve with Binder. We know the pressures mortgage advisers are under to deliver high levels of professional and compliant advice to their customers. So the features that we’ve now developed are designed to be serious game changers - ultimately helping all of us regain valuable time, while equipping us with an essential tool that will enable us to work as efficiently as possible”. Simon Horsfall
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