Halifax requires borrowers to provide written proof of how the loan will be repaid before a mortgage offer is made. Until April 6, it only asked borrowers to say that they had a repayment vehicle in place before the mortgage offer.
It is the latest example of banks and building societies tightening their lending criteria amid growing fears that home owners will default on their loans due to high unemployment.
Halifax allows borrowers to repay interest-only mortgages using endowment policies, Isas, pensions, shares, savings or the sale of a second home.
It means a borrower – who says they will use the money saved in Individual Savings Accounts to repay their home loan – must provide a copy of their latest Isa statement for the last 12 months before they can receive an offer from the lender.

Only earthquake-hit Japan will grow more slowly than British economy

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/fina ... onomy.html

only until Japan starts to rebuild then they will outstrip our growth massively ...

Perhaps all we need a a few more fires under motorways. The short term economic impact will be bad, but once the rebuilding kicks in....

in every dark cloud there is always a silver lining ...

Perhaps all we need a a few more fires under motorways.

Consumers collectively have £1.003 trillion held in savings and current accounts, around £110 billion of which is held in accounts that do not pay any interest at all, according to accountants UHY Hacker Young.
Overall, the average return people are getting on their money is just 1.6pc, well down on inflation as measured by the Retail Prices Index, which was running at 5.2pc in April, the latest month for which figures are available.
Even accounts that have traditionally paid higher returns, such as tax-free ISAs and fixed rate bonds, are currently only paying average interest of 2.57pc.
As a result, Britons have collectively seen the real value of their savings drop by £36.45 billion during the past year, once interest of £15.75 billion is taken into account.
People's savings are also being diminished by inflation if the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measure is used, with this running at 4.5pc in April, slashing the buying power of people's deposits by £29.42 billion.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jun/12/number-of-homeowners-will-fall

From my narrow short-term perspective, excellent!

Though it will mean that they will have to increase taxes longer term or have some way of culling pensioners.

poverty is actually quite good at killing people, particularly the infirm.