Sunday, February 24, 2008
Housing Statistics Can Be Misleading Home owners says Lawrenson of LettingFocus
A good example is the Council of Mortgage lenders stats.
These are dutifully quoted from as if they are the Word of God by many property journalists. Take the often quoted stat about the percentage of a house buyers’ income that goes on mortgage interest. This stat rightly gets quoted every month it comes out.
Trouble is its not entirely comparing like with like because it does not take account of the ubiquitous mortgage “application” or “arrangement” fee - a misnomer if ever there was one.
As these fees are now often well over 2% for a typical two or three year discounted mortgage, and seeing as they hardly existed at all 10 odd years ago, comparing this on a time series is meaningless. It’s also a bit daft to not take account of them either.
It’s not the fault of the CML -they haven’t got time to adjust their stats for all the different fees the lenders charge and it would be very hard to do so anyway.
But really, the journalists who quote this stuff ought to ask some more questions and go beyond the confines of the press release to delve into the figures a bit more.
For the rest of us, just don’t believe all you read.
If you need more advice on buy to let mortgages or buy to let investment in general please ask me. I’m David Lawrenson from property investment advisors http://www.lettingfocus.com/
I’m the author of the buy to let book “Successful Property Letting - How to Make Money in Buy to Let” the UK’s top selling property title.
I’m an expert on property investing for profit and a well known property freelance writer and I contribute to newspapers and a host of property websites, write a property investment blog and run a landlords advice service.
I also work as a consultant helping banks, building societies, housing associations and web portals with their buy to let and property products and services.You can read more of my property investment blog and details of my networking, advice, property networking programme at my website http://www.lettingfocus.com/
Our next London landlords networking meeting is coming soon. Click here for details: Property Investment Advice
What’s unique about lettingfocus.com is that we offer independent property mentoring because unlike most people in the buy to let and property “advice” business we are not linked to a property company, developer, agent or bridging loan financier and do not receive commissions from any of these sources.If a property investment is lousy – We’ll tell you straight and we will tell you all about buy to let and property investment - the good and the bad and we won’t make silly promises that you’ll become a millionaire overnight.
Copyright: David Lawrenson 2008.
This blog is updated at least twice a week. Permission must be sought before using the material in the blog.
These are dutifully quoted from as if they are the Word of God by many property journalists. Take the often quoted stat about the percentage of a house buyers’ income that goes on mortgage interest. This stat rightly gets quoted every month it comes out.
Trouble is its not entirely comparing like with like because it does not take account of the ubiquitous mortgage “application” or “arrangement” fee - a misnomer if ever there was one.
As these fees are now often well over 2% for a typical two or three year discounted mortgage, and seeing as they hardly existed at all 10 odd years ago, comparing this on a time series is meaningless. It’s also a bit daft to not take account of them either.
It’s not the fault of the CML -they haven’t got time to adjust their stats for all the different fees the lenders charge and it would be very hard to do so anyway.
But really, the journalists who quote this stuff ought to ask some more questions and go beyond the confines of the press release to delve into the figures a bit more.
For the rest of us, just don’t believe all you read.
If you need more advice on buy to let mortgages or buy to let investment in general please ask me. I’m David Lawrenson from property investment advisors http://www.lettingfocus.com/
I’m the author of the buy to let book “Successful Property Letting - How to Make Money in Buy to Let” the UK’s top selling property title.
I’m an expert on property investing for profit and a well known property freelance writer and I contribute to newspapers and a host of property websites, write a property investment blog and run a landlords advice service.
I also work as a consultant helping banks, building societies, housing associations and web portals with their buy to let and property products and services.You can read more of my property investment blog and details of my networking, advice, property networking programme at my website http://www.lettingfocus.com/
Our next London landlords networking meeting is coming soon. Click here for details: Property Investment Advice
What’s unique about lettingfocus.com is that we offer independent property mentoring because unlike most people in the buy to let and property “advice” business we are not linked to a property company, developer, agent or bridging loan financier and do not receive commissions from any of these sources.If a property investment is lousy – We’ll tell you straight and we will tell you all about buy to let and property investment - the good and the bad and we won’t make silly promises that you’ll become a millionaire overnight.
Copyright: David Lawrenson 2008.
This blog is updated at least twice a week. Permission must be sought before using the material in the blog.
Labels: buying property as investment, house price to earnings ratio, house price to income ratio, housing data, Housing statistics
lettingfocus | | link to this post | 
recent comments