Chris Thompson   Chris Thompson on the internet

Mortgage lending figures dropped sharply in January, as the BBC article covering it here reports, and it has been in the news for a while. The joys of the recession, eh?

However, a couple of weeks ago, mortgages were in the news for an entirely different reason. A very surreal reason.

Four people are facing jail because of an £8 million mortgage fraud, where the group seem to have “bombarded” a number of different companies with claim after claim after claim. It doesn’t seem real, somehow. It’s a little like something out of a James Bond film or something. Quite strange to think that, actually, it was happening just down the road in Essex.

And it got me wondering: just how easy is it to do something like that? To continually apply for mortgages or remortgages from Nationwide, or any of the other big establishments.

I suppose it’s fair to say that, with mortgage forums that are set up to discuss borrowing money, it has become easier to find markets.

The internet makes everything easier. You can do anything from broadcast your music, to selling your property or home quickly for cash on the internet. And in many ways, it’s a wonderful tool.

But, like many wonderful tools, it can be exploited. It amazes me that they were able to apply for 33 fraudulent mortgage applications. And it amazes me that, considering it looks like it was only two companies they pestered, they weren’t found out sooner.

Manchester United played Aston Villa for the Cup today, and I waddled along to the pub with a few friends to watch the game on a wonderful, large screen, while drinking fantastic local drinks.

I must admit, after the busy week I’ve had, it was nice to be able to sit back and relax. However, with drink and food and conversation sometimes come unexpected plans. And now, around October, I have planned to go for a little weekend road trip around America. The vague plan, as I recall, is to watch a university American football game, and watch an NFL game – watch a real, thriller of a game, if we can, and see some true great players.

The trouble arises when it comes to the financing. I’m not quite sure how to fund the trip. So I’ve been looking at everything from cash ISA savings accounts, to browsing through the vaults of finance and savings news to try and come up with some sort of genius plan.

I’ve even been looking over Nationwide’s savings and investment schemes, which reminded me of the premium bonds I have. A moment of wishful thinking, but realistically I need to plan the adventure on concrete things.

I suppose, at the very least, I have a graduate loan to fall back on, but that comes with the added worry of more debt.

I’m a little worried about debt. Because I’m starting a post-graduate course on the first of February, and whilst I am very excited about it, the finance part of it does worry me.

The fees are like all college or university fees: horrendously expensive. So expensive that the only way I can really afford it is to take out a career development loan. Thankfully this, as far as loans go, is quite nice: you pay no interest over your course, and you don’t even start paying it back until it’s finished.

It is different to a student loan, though, because it feels like a very real debt. The student loan goes away if you haven’t paid it off by a certain time. You don’t need to start paying it until you’re earning a certain amount of money. But this, this is a real loan, with real money that will need to start being paid back pretty quickly.

I’ve tried looking for debt advice. There are websites out there that can usually help with this sort of thing. Or, at the very least, give you information on it. Tell you your choices. There are websites like This is Money, which specialise in giving you the latest up to date news on all things finance, as well.

In fact, a quick Google shows all sorts of money advice websites, much like this.

None of them touch on my main worry, though. With my course starting so quickly, what it my loan application falls through? What if I’m left stranded in the middle of a course that I then can’t pay for?

I suppose the only option then would be to look at the other options my bank offers: personal loans, or some of their other loans that you can supposedly apply for in a matter of minutes online. But they worry me even more than the career development one does…

Today has been a bit of a strange one.

After speaking with one of my oldest friends, who is trying to sell up and move down south, I’ve been reading up on the news on house prices and the housing market.

My friend bought the house a long time ago for something like £200,000, I think, and although it had gone up considerably a few years back when they flirted with the idea of selling, now it’s fallen down again. Which is strange, because apparently house prices finished 2009 around 4% higher than they started it.

But there are plenty of examples that this isn’t necessarily the case.

Here, for example, you can find dozens of examples of property prices falling, all collected neatly in the same place, as well as a number of slightly depressing predictions about when we can expect any kind of economic recovery.

You can check out repossession news, and finance market websites, you can get something of a picture to why such a recovery could be a long way off. Apparently up to 1 million UK households have used credit cards to pay for their house mortgages.

When we are at such a stage that we have to borrow so much money just to have a house to live in, it’s no wonder there are so many repossession problems. Despite a rise in online help, if you are in a situation where you are looking at remortgaging or repossession; despite investment companies offering ways to avoid repossession and stop repossessions, it can still be stressful and problematic. And it’s always worrying.

My friends are looking to move from Leeds down south, which will be good for me, because it means I can see them more. But it’s looking slightly more expensive for them than they were expecting. They’ve been looking out for mortgage deals already, of course, but it doesn’t mean that they’ve found any particularly striking ones.

Let’s hope that these predictions of a full economic recovery in 6 months time are correct.

I didn’t realise that, on average, our young, new drivers had so little experience, so few lessons. When I came across this piece, I read with some interest. Apparently there has been a study undertaken to show that quite a few young drivers feel unprepared for being unleashed on the road. Many of them have only had up to 30 hours of practice, whilst it is recommended you should have 45 hours of training – in addition to 22 hours of private training.

Suddenly it’s not so surprising that car insurance companies provide such steep quotes for fresh-faced, recently passed drivers.

And yet, many people find it outrageous that companies can charge so much for insurance. It can, in a lot of cases, be huge amounts of money. Rarely, though, do we see it from their perspective. Car insurance companies are increasingly losing money on injury claims, with “bloodthirsty lawyers” always looking to squeeze out extra revenue. Not to mention the amount of claims which will be unjust, falsified, or completely fictitious.

We live in an age of cheap deals, where there are a number of websites that specialise in beating your last quote, and digging up the very best offer. People want their car insurance quotes to be delivered quickly, cheaply – and again the insurance companies will be under pressure to compete, to lower their prices. Again, the car insurance companies will be losing money.

There are plenty of websites that aim to give you plenty of compensation for accidents and injuries, too. Personal injury claims lawyers who offer no win no fee deals, but strive to win something, anything – even if you haven’t been hurt in the first place. You have your own personal injury calculators, too. It really is a different world these days, developed over the last twenty years or so.

A world where the legal profession is blended with our lives and our cars more than ever. But is it really for the best?

Manchester United are in serious debt. Liverpool are, too.

The economic downturn has a far reaching shadow that extends well beyond us to every aspect of society.

We hear about it through the television, through the newspapers, through every aspect of the media. People are struggling in every aspect of society – even football teams are struggling. Struggling to balance their titanic wage books, struggling to keep afloat when, for so long, they have had to pay millions and millions of pounds to player after player.

What can we do? The average Joe, the everyman, working and working for just a scratching of the money that these sports players and celebrities make? What can we do? How do we manage money when even people whose job it is to manage money are struggling to do so?

Financial protection and, with it, now more so than ever, financial planning becomes key, becomes incredibly important. We need to be careful in everything we do, everything we spend money on, because it is so easy to misstep. And in times like these, financial missteps can be tremendously costly.

Today is the day of good deals – looking for them, finding them, and taking them, where you can. There are places that can help out with this, Money Supermarket, and other websites designed with you in mind, to help you out with your finance and your spending. And they can be tremendously beneficial.

And, it goes without saying, that insurance of every kind is as important as ever. From the small things, whether it’s your mp3 player, or if you’re just looking for home insurance reviews – or the bigger, more important things.

You can get life insurance that covers health problems, critical illness, and other things.

And, based on the premise that your home is the biggest investment you’ll ever make, there are some impressive (and not so impressive) mortgage life insurance cover schemes out there, as well.

The problem is that there are so many of these kinds of deals, you need to do your research and make sure that you find the right one for you.

New Years Eve and Day have vanished in a blur, and now here we are in a properly new year, staring 2010 in the face. Everyone is making their new year’s resolutions. Traditionally, of course, this is a time for change, a time for a fresh start, a time for renewal. This is a time to be the person you want to be. But some things, it seems, don’t change. I was browsing a list of property prices in 2010, and couldn’t help but notice that here, in the property market, things seem as horrible as ever.

I’m almost certain that I read something about house prices going up, and might have even blogged about it a while ago, sometime towards the end of last year. Some news story or hint or glimmer of hope that suggested change – of a good variety – was on the horizon. But evidently I remember wrong.

No matter how you look at it, things for our economy are still not looking good, and as a recent graduate, that’s quite a scary thought. I still know people who are looking for a job over a year out of university. There was a time when having a degree alone was enough, but not anymore.

All the word at the pub tonight was about mortgages, too – even mortgage rates are under the shadow of this repression, which, like the enemy in a horror movie seems to never go away.

Here’s hoping things pick up soon. Otherwise, it’s not much of a happy new year so far. It’s not just affecting property buyers and home buyers, it’s affecting everyone who works in the industry. I wouldn’t want to be one of our countries’ property investors if things continue this way. Or any countries’, for that matter. But I suppose you can say that about a lot of jobs, in these times.

I think it is about time I write a little about my work, and about my office. It’s only fair really, considering I had the cheek to moan about it a few weeks back; about the moving around, about the cleaning up, and the updating. I wrote about how I hoped it would be nicer, when it was all done; I hope things would be able to run a bit more smoothly. And thankfully they do! The mission was a success. Things have been updated, and they work – and they work very well.

On the work front, a lot of this new smoothness can be chalked up to the business broadband. We had initially been worried that, with quite limited business sdsl availability in our area, we wouldn’t be able to go for the ideal internet connection, but in the end it worked out. The new internet is not only a lot faster than our previous one, but it doesn’t seem to disconnect as much either. There were times before where you could be working, and out of nowhere, and apparently for no real reason, you would get cut off. As long as I haven’t just jinxed it, it seems to be the case no longer.

Our telephones were also updated, which was almost as needed as the internet fix. Mostly this is because our phones were the most out of date things in the office. Probably even more out of date than Jack’s Tottenham shirt, which is yellow and very, very dated. Now our phones can do all sorts of fancy stuff. It is a little bit like these voip phone systems that you can get, and can do a lot more than just serve as a telephone. Fancy stuff.

Tomorrow is the big day. Wembley. The NFL, over here in England. So there is a lot to look forward to, and I’m growing more and more excited by the minute.

I woke up quite early today; I was up before the rest of the house, in fact, which is a real rarity at the moment. So I spent half an hour or so looking at mortgage news. It might sound a little boring, but it’s something that I quite like to do, every so often, just to keep abreast of how things are looking in the climate we find ourselves in. And there are some handy sites out there for just that sort of thing; you can sort of glance over the main headlines without needing to spend too much time reading anything.

There really was some quite positive stuff to read as well, which is always good to see. For example, there is an article here suggesting that mortgage rates are rising – indeed, rising for the first time since August, which is good to see. It might be a “small move”, but baby steps are always going to be needed with something like this.

I know that if I were in the market to sell my house, or in the mood to be selling any property at all, I would be pleased to see news pieces like this. I’d be starting to smile, I think. It is a good sign, because although there have been a few of these incidents, where things start to look good momentarily – often they are just that: momentary. Hopefully here, things can keep moving forward.

Now, it is time to kick back, relax, and watch a bit of the NFL, I think. Currently Tom Brady is on track to break the single game passing touchdown record. Unless they take him off, of course, which they probably will do considering the horrible conditions they’re playing in. I’m not usually the biggest fan of the Patriots, but when you have Brady in your fantasy team, having him throw 5 touchdowns in the 2nd quarter becomes slightly more exciting.

I have been thinking a lot about houses recently, after a recent trip to Cambridge. It’s an area I’d like to live in, if I could. Now, though, I find myself looking at all the mortgage news I can find, even if it’s just to keep on top of it. I feel like if I can just do a little bit of research here and there, and keep up to date with the latest news and trends, I will find myself in a good position when it eventually does become a matter of getting one.

Now, when mortgage time does roll around, I don’t very much like the idea of a bad credit mortgage. And the recession is slightly worrying. But articles like this one inspire a little bit of hope, and make me feel as though there could be a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel, when it comes to mortgage rates.

I must say, though, that mortgage deals aren’t the only thing that has been playing on my mind, though. I still can’t help but feel a little disappointed about the house prices in Cambridge. Especially when you consider how much people can pay for the cash for home offers that are becoming more and more frequent now.

Ah well. I suppose I should just try and forget about it for a while. Perhaps grab a beer and watch some of the NFL, or something.