The return of the liar loan and what that says about the housing market

The self-cert mortgage, banned by the FCA, is back. And the company offering them is overwhelmed by the volume of applications.

160126-liar-loan

The UK housing market: getting out of control again?

We've been looking for signals that tell us that the UK housing market is getting a little out of control again. Last week gave us a new one (for this cycle at least): the return of liar loans. These might have banned by the FCA last April, but it turns out you can still get them.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.