Having been around this wonderful mortgage world for the best part of 30 years, I have been somewhat privileged enough to see all the fireworks within financial services.
High rates, cheap deals, recessions, Covid, Banking crisis, serious growth, and when borrowers just handed their keys back and walked away with negative equity looming large. What could 2023 do that I hadn’t seen before?
Plenty! 2023 seemed to deliver a curve ball almost every day. Survival was our initial objective, we had to cut costs and ensure the business was able to survive with a lower level of potential opportunities.
Planning was almost impossible when you had rate mayhem, but realising that few people were looking to move home, Product Transfers quickly became our business life-saver.
It may have equated to more work for similar money, but it did provide that important income to our business, more importantly, it meant we could keep that relationship going with our clients, unlike the crash in 2008.Â
It became evident that borrowers wanted more information to support decisions about rate choices, and as a smaller broker firm, we do not have the resources to do a lot of work.
Working within the Newspage team allowed me to better understand our economy and how lenders react, helping me create over 500 comments and articles about our beloved mortgage market over the past 12 months.Â
Going from reading the news to creating the news, helped create better credibility with clients as they not only heard it from me directly but read the same in the press too.
Plenty of learns, even for the veterans of this industry. We thank the industry for improved Product Transfer options that will inevitably keep going throughout 2024.
More will take the opportunity to buy, with lower rates and lower property prices encouraging those first-time buyers who have hidden away for a year or so. However, there will be no more ultra-cheap mortgage rates for a long time.
Justin Moy is managing director of EHF Mortgages
