Banks withdraw trackers

[spickee]

I went to Barclays yesterday as we are looking at taking out a small mortgage again, no point money being on a credit card when a short term mortgage will cover it.

Barclays had pulled all their products except current fixed rate deals.

Going back to see them next Thursday, they are expecting new products to be released on Monday so we'll see.

Never seen a mortgage advisor look more like he was going to cream his pants when I told him our situation and how much we wanted.

[Mr Nice]

Barclays had pulled all their products except current fixed rate deals.Yeah, most (all?) trackers by all mortgage providers got pulled Thursday afternoon within an hour of the BoE's anouncement. Off course the fixed rates got left for anyone silly enough to not wait for them to reprice them.

[allan]

The fact they have withdrawn goes to show just how greedy the banks are in my opinion. Ironic that we have this financial situation due to their greed in the first place.

[gagsy]

Not just their greed though is it. Government was greedy by allowing very risky business practices simply because they didn't understand them and reaping substantial corporation tax, NI contributions and VAT revenues on the back of it.(Plenty of people in work and plenty of people spending borrowed money) Plus the cache of a growing economy and a growing City. Home owners have been equally greedy in getting on the mortgage equity withdrawal escalator in large numbers. Oh and inexperienced buy to let-ers banking on rapidly increasing asset values rather than investing for the long term.

[KennyVader]

The fact they have withdrawn goes to show just how greedy the banks are in my opinion. Ironic that we have this financial situation due to their greed in the first place.

To me the fact that all the banks withdrew their trackers so quickly showed that they as completely taken by surprise by the move as everyone else. You would think that the banks would have financial analysts on their staff watching all aspects of the economy and coming to the same conclusions as the Bank of England and government analysts; especially since we have very recently seen similar drastic cuts in other countries. So either the general bank analysts should have expected and been ready for a 1.5% cut and had new tracker products ready for market more or less immediately; or the BofE / government peeps have got things completely wrong.

Either way it shows that our financial industry is in a state of farce and panic.

[Mr Nice]

Or maybe the 1.5% cut will work out fine in the end but the 1% cut the market was expecting would have worked too (possibly with cuts in later months which look unlikely now). Plus the MPC members had early access to this weeks BoE's inflation report (which despite the narrow name, covers more general economic indicators then just inflation).