With lending rates near record lows, there was a sharp rise in remortgaging in March Kirsty Wigglesworth/APFinancial regulators are watching the mortgage price war “like a hawk” amid concerns that lenders are taking ever bigger bets on the property market. Sam Woods, a deputy governor at the Bank of England, warned that regulators may crack down on banks using loopholes in the rules to park less loss-absorbing capital against home loans. There are signs of a bubble building in the mortgage market, where interest rates are falling and more lending is directed at riskier buyers with small deposits. Recent figures from UK Finance, the banking industry body, showed a sharp rise in remortgaging in March, with borrowers withdrawing £937 million of equity from homes. That has accompanied the average mortgage rate, at 2.1 per cent, falling to near-record lows.

Source: The Times May 24, 2019 23:03 UTC