House Prices

I remember it well. My uncle and his mates retired 5 years early and bought property abroad.

Crazy days, you could get a buy to let mortgage with zero affordability checks, you just signed a piece of paper to say you could afford it.

I also remember the massive credit bubble that built up on Labour's watch that all the Brown apologists neglect to mention then they talk about the financial crisis. Then the retards talk about "Tory Austerity" as if they had a choice after Labour's credit bubble burst and left the country in a trillion pounds worth of debt. Just like the same retards called for lockdowns, furlough, business bail outs, mass testing / vaccination... and now don't want to face the consequences of how the fuck we pay back another trillion lol.

It really is depressing when people talk about problems then deny any responsibility in being a part of them.

I was a database developer / dba at barclays bank / first plus / broker ridge at the time

We were at the forefront of rebrokering sub prime mortgages.

People who rang the barclays mortgage application line who had absolutely NO chance of meeting the utterly draconian (for the time) 60% debt to income, 75-80% loan to valuation, permanent employment restrictions of Barclays Bank’s internal mortgage unit were told openly, directly and honestly by the IFAs working in that unit that from the information given they were not in an appropriate occupation / employment relationship, did not have a sufficient salary, or were applying for too large a loan on too insubstantial a property to be considered for a barclays mortgage. I know this because i was paid £45k by the bank in 2007 to write the fucking script.

It was what happenned next that caused the problem.

The caller was told they might be able to obtain a mortgage deal from an alternative source, a financial broker who were offering to consider your circumstances and refer you to a company unrelated to Barclays Bank who might be able to offer you a mortgage product but it would not be financed by Barclays, you would not be dealing with Barclays Bank and that the interest rate associated with that product would probably be far higher than that offered by the bank for their own financial products. Now we have made you aware of that fact, would you like me to transfer you to them.

Again, i know that to be the script because i wrote it. It was put through the financial regulatory body such as it was at the time and as you can tell was categoric in distinguishing where they were going as NOT the organisation they first contacted.

The call was routed to the rebrokering centre physically distant from Barclays Bank and identified as such on all contact media.

The niche companies to which that brokerage sent applicants ranged from those providing loans at only marginally higher rates, with almost the same financial restrictions, but allowing wider categories of applicant - such as to the self employed or limited company owners who could show five years or more audited accounts, to a company who offered a loan of i think at most 175% of the current valuation (a product popular with builders buying property to improve) to insane deals offering loans of a quarter of a million on a house valued at £175,000 at an APR of 26.9%

And naturally everyone was offered PPI