Anthony Emmerson

Hi, Meryn.

How are you?

The landscape has changed dramatically.

I mean, last time we spoke, we were on a journey where we were expecting one, maybe two Bank of England base rate cuts.

The inflation looked like it was a little bit more in control.

And then

it's flipped entirely on its head and we are now in a position where the iran war has created an immediate surge in the interest rates that are available to clients we saw within a two week period an increase of around about 1.2 percent in the cost of borrowing which is exactly the opposite of what we were hoping for

The lowest rates are available at the point where the war started was around about 3.6 and then that jumped up to 4.7 as the sort of best rate option that was available.

And that was where a stonkingly high 40% deposit.

At the moment, just short of 5%.

And that, I mean, the interest rates went up by sort of 1.2, where everything was in excess of 5%.

But since then, we've seen a little bit of a softening as the swap rates have edged downwards a little bit.

And I think the uncertainty caused lenders to over...

compensate for the uncertainty.

And then as things have sort of panned out and they've got more of an idea of how it's going to affect, we've had the rates come down a little bit, around about sort of 0.2 of a percent.

So we're still that 1% higher.

The lenders, bless them, are doing absolutely everything they can to try and get us into the properties that we want.

I mean, we've seen more and more lenders these days change their affordability calculations.

So we've now got more lenders lending five and a half times your income, even up to six times your income for certain people.

And we have really reached that inflection point still where