Northern Rock hides a housing disaster

Mabon Dane · 2006-04-04T02:43:18+00:00

Northern Rock recently announced excellent results for shareholders, and their board should be proud of the profits they have made. In the shadow of the mountain of lenders like Northern Rock, is a hidden story that one day soon will be told on the backs of a tsunami, that will wipe out many families, homes and lives when the housing bubble bursts. Northern Rock has taken a significant share of a market of deluded and greedy home owners, who have involved themselves well beyond their financial means in a housing market that is about to turn against them. Northern Rock offers first-time buyers loans six times their income and 125% the value of the property. It is all easy money. The interest rates being low and a nice earner can be made from buying and selling houses to fund higher credit card spending and more loans. Lending by Northern Rock has gone up 26% in the last 3 months, assisted by a still strong housing market. Here is the catch. Most of those "new loans" are remortgages. In reality the customers are in financial distress and are reorganising their finances by taking out mortgages on top of mortgages. Within the figures by Northern Rock is a hidden story of increased bankruptcies and repossessions. Northern Rock has a way of keeping the profits coming in as they will seek "quicker crystallisation on defaulting loans where they are higher-risk loans;" in otherwords default on a payment to Northern Rock and say goodbye to that nice expensive house that will be repossessed quickly, sold off cheaply, whilst the remaining cash is taken when the greedy customer is shoved into bankruptcy. You got to laugh, I did! Mabon Dane

Apr 04, 2006 23 Replies

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Tim 20 years ago

"DaveJ" wrote

Think again ... overpaying a loan charging 20% would save even more money than overpaying a mortgage charging only 6% !!

"DaveJ" wrote

Weekly?!!

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DaveJ 20 years ago

No thanks - would rather be paying 6% whilst I was overpaying...

Seems to be going that way - houses will be 4.3 times more affordable... LOL

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Tim 20 years ago

"DaveJ" wrote

You said "your first example", which involved paying some interest at 6% and some at 20%. In that scenario, overpaying the 20% loan is much better than overpaying the 6% mortgage.

If you meant the scenario of having all the debt at the

6% rate, then that was "second example" (not first)...

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DaveJ 20 years ago

Blimey, too much computer-watching, bad for the eyes.

It was taking the house+car over 25 years and overpaying option (as Ronald suggested), sorry about that.

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