1st December
Feb 23rd, 2009 by ctoop
Mortgage lending has fallen a massive 70% in four weeks, in September lending was at £1.5bn, however, in October it was a mere £459million. This has sparked fears within government that next year lending could in fact turn negative. This is bad news for anyone wanting to move and to sell their homes, with so few loans available, buyers can’t be found even if house prices are slashed.
Sales at supermarket giant Tesco have fallen to their lowest figure for 16 years. The figures for Tesco show that their annual growth was only 2% in the past three months. This is exceedingly bad news as Tesco takes £1 of every £8 spent on the high street, indicating that families are spending much less than they used to. It is thought the Tesco has lost £22million from customers switching to budget supermarkets such as Asda, Lidl and Aldi.
High street shops are in a sales war this Christmas, trying to entice shoppers into their stores by slashing the prices of many items. Debenhams and Marks and Spencer are two shops that are competing for Christmas sales and are trying to out do each other with their sales. Debenhams are wiping 20% off many items and M&S are having one day sales to bring in the customers. The extent of the on offer throughout the high street is thought to be the most aggressive for more than 30 years. Littlewoods Direct has joined n by trying to attract shoppers with up to 60% off on 5,000 of its lines. It is thought that all of these sales mean that there is an average discount of 32%, or a total saving of £115 per adult this Christmas.
Woolworths have gone into administration and although the 25,000 store staff have currently not lost their jobs, as the stores are staying open until after Christmas, 450 administration staff have been made redundant.
Nationwide have introduced a system of risk-based pricing, meaning that the interest rates on loans are no longer based on the size of the loan, instead people on lower incomes will have to pay more interest than those on higher incomes. This means that the people most in need of a loan will find it more difficult to both secure a loan and also more expensive.
