Real Estate Update in Palo Alto & Los Altos

A recent report has suggested that the Spanish owned high street bank, the Abbey, is in the unusual position of being able to encourage mortgage loans customers rather than turn them away because it is not experiencing the same difficulties as British lenders when it comes to securing finance for its mortgage lending operations. British banks have found it increasingly difficult and expensive to secure finding for their mortgage lending operations since the onset of the global credit crunch, and this has led to many having to turn customers away and discourage new applications by hiking up interest rates and tightening up on lending criteria.

However, whilst British banks continue to struggle to secure the finance that they need the Abbey has been able to go through the European Central Bank to secure its funding, and this is because of its Spanish origins. Other lenders are now claiming that this proves that the Bank of England has not been doing enough to intervene in relation to the problems in the mortgages market.

Meanwhile, the Abbey’s ability to get funding from the ECB has put the lender in second position when it comes to mortgage lending, with estimations that the lender is writing one if every six new remortgages, taking a 17% cut of all mortgage lending. It has only been pipped to the number one spot for market share in the mortgage sector by Nationwide following its merger with the Portman Building Society.

As a result of the situation the Abbey is said to be one of the few mortgage lenders that is now able to actively encourage custom from potential mortgage borrowers, whereas many other lenders who are struggling to raise finance are having to scale down on the number of people and the type of borrowers that they are able to lend to.