Newcastle Building Society Storm the Mortgage Best Buy Charts

Last week the Newcastle Building Society released a new range of mortgage product and they are now at either the top of the best buy charts or at number two in the following categories:

• Short Term Fixed Rate Mortgages
• Long Term Fixed Rate Mortgages
• First Time Buyer Mortgages (Moneyfacts only)
• Tracker Rate Mortgages
• Discount Variable Rate Mortgages

If the providers of these types of charts actually looked at anything other than headline rate i.e. the Loan to Value (LTV), the Newcastle Building Society’s mortgage products would be sitting at the very top of all the aforementioned best buy tables.

The only exception being, the Moneyfacts First Time Buyer Best Buy Table published in the Scotland on Sunday. Here at the www.thebestbestbuys.com we do not think that any mortgage product that does not have an LTV of 90% should be displacing products that do. If anything it shows a lack of understanding of what represents a “best buy” to the first time buyer market.

Stranger still is the fact that Moneyfacts have dropped the Furness Building Society from the First Time Buyer Best Buy table in the Scotland on Sunday for the first time in about 14 months. Having checked with Furness the product is still available at 4.94% for 3 years with a fee of £699 and an LTV of 90%. We however have put it at its rightful position of number 1 in our charts.

Moneysupermarket are even stranger as the Furness product simply does not appear in their best buy tables for first time buyers and to the best of my knowledge it never has.

Hopefully the actions of the Newcastle Building Society will force other providers to up their LTVs and we will see competition return to the UK mortgage market for the first time in over 18 months.

Financial comparison websites are misleading and the newspapers help them mislead

In today’s Daily Telegraph there is a very good article by Harry Wallop explaining how industry experts have said that Comparison Websites are misleading and that they give greater prominence to providers who pay their fees. Although this is obvious to anybody that knows anything about financial services the wider public seem to struggle to understand that they are being manipulated.

If you are reading the article online, take a look at the left hand side of the page. There you will find a best buy chart provided by Moneysupermarket that is promoting Credit Cards with 0% on purchases. How ironic is it that the credit cards shown in this pseudo best buy table do not list the top deals for credit cards of this nature.

So you have to respect the editorial independence of the telegraph but I think we should also point out that the newspapers, the telegraph included, continue to promote and get paid by financial comparison websites like Moneysupermarket.

So although Mr Wallop has brought the issue out in the open the paper he writes for continues to ensure the prominence of websites that are attempting to fleece the consumer.

They use the PR guff generated by these sites as the basis for articles, they use them to comment in numerous stories each week and they get paid to carry their advertising.

A very bad case of ignoring the facts when it suits and not even being that smart about it.

Here at the www.thebestbestbuys.com we will continue to bring the issue of misleading websites to the attention of as many people as we can. However it is not easy when the press are so obviously in bed with the comparison sites that we know are taking the proverbial and profiteering through misrepresentation.