Market Comment 17th May 2010 PDF Print E-mail
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Written by TrigoldCrystal Marketing Manager   
Friday, 21 May 2010 00:00
Last Thursday TrigoldCrystal were attending the NatWest Intermediary Solutions Forum down at the O2 Arena in London. There was a great turn-out of intermediaries from near and far keen to listen to some excellent seminars on a range of very interesting topics. Of course we were there to promote our new Web Tools products. We’ve been rolling Your Site Sourcing out to lots of businesses this week and were pleased to meet a lot more intermediaries keen on adding sourcing to their websites at the show. We will be in touch with you all shortly to help you get the system up and running. Some of the most interesting points raised at the show for us were:
  • That over 88% of brokers said that new and better deals for FTB are key to securing the recovery.
  • That over a third of brokers thought the first rate rise would come at some point of Q4 of this year and another third think they will rise in Q1 of next year. It was interesting that there was a universal agreement between the panel of market experts that the longer it takes for rates to rise the steeper the rises would be, and that the emergency budget on the 22nd of June could change everything.
  • Other interesting ideas that emerged were that although the level of growth in the housing market will slow as we go through 2010, that overall a small rate of around 5% PA would be achievable as more stock comes onto the property market at around the same rate that mortgage lending will be increasing.
  • There was also a good run though of the positives and negatives that political and regulation changes will bring to the industry. Among the positives was the removal of HIPs which should make it easier for people to “test the market” when deciding to sell a property, without having to put money up front. Among the negatives was the introduction of free advisory service paid for by a levy on the industry.
And finally, after having created a good deal of friction with intermediaries over the past 2 years it is good to see NatWest coming back and delivering something of real value to intermediaries. It will take them a lot more work to get where they want to be in the eyes of many brokers but events such as this are a start – especially if followed up with greater parity when it comes to the competitiveness of their intermediary products vs. their direct versions.
Last Updated on Tuesday, 01 June 2010 09:21