BANK OF IRELAND has announced that it has launched a range of new mortgages available to customers in negative equity.
The bank says the new mortgages are in line with Central Bank guidelines, and they say, will allow greater numbers of customers, that are in negative equity to move home.
Customers will undergo a full assessment, says the bank and must demonstrate that they can afford the new mortgage.
The mortgages will be offered in two forms - one for those in negative equity who wish to move to a property of a higher value, and one for those who wish to dispose of their current home and move to a home of lower value.
Jonathan Byrne, head of mortgages at Bank of Ireland, speaking on Morning Ireland, said that the new products have been agreed with the Central Bank. He said that 50% of the bank's residential mortgages were in negative equity.
With regard to tracker mortgages, he said that for customers trading up, that they wouldn't be in a position to bring their tracker interest rate with them, but that for customers trading down, that the bank had agreed with the central bank that retaining the tracker rate was allowed.
THE FINANCIAL STABILITY BOARD has published global guidance to make granting home loans more rigorous. This comes years after weak lending standards in the US mortgage market spiralled into the worst financial crisis in decades.
The Swiss-based Board, a regulatory task force for the world's top 20 economies, said poorly underwritten home loans contributed significantly to the global financial crisis.
Home prices fell sharply in many countries - including the United States, Ireland and Spain - contributing to major economic difficulties since the financial crisis erupted in 2008.
EUROPEAN SHARES were lower yesterday, led by heavy falls for both Spanish and Italian indices, with bank stocks hit by investor worries over a Spanish debt auction today.
Madrid's IBEX 35 was the biggest faller, down 4 per cent, after data showing Spanish banks' bad loans rose to their highest since October 1994 in February, to 8.2 per cent of their credit portfolios.
Sentiment was also dealt a blow when European Central Bank policymaker Jens Weidmann said Spain should take a rise in its bond yields as a spur to tackle the root causes of its debt woes and not look to the ECB to help by buying its bonds.
