THE number of property millionaires in Scotland is soaring faster than anywhere else in the UK, if you believe a report from the Halifax claiming a 138% boom in homes exchanging hands for seven figures.
Leaving aside the poor taste in putting it out the same day as the publication of repossession data showing growing numbers struggling to keep a roof over their heads, this latest piece of property porn is as useless as a tart in a nunnery, and only
slightly less offensive.
The truth is there are fewer property millionaires across the whole of Scotland than in most English regions, or indeed in most tiny London boroughs. There are three times as many in places such as Kensington and Chelsea. If you had wanted to get rich quick you should have headed south. In fact, just 343 homes were sold for more than a million pounds in Scotland last year, compared with 4,407 in London and 1,998 in the south-east of England.
Halifax makes the further ludicrous claim that Edinburgh, with 148, has the second highest number of property millionaires outside London.
What nonsense. It arrives at this highly misleading statistic by comparing the city with small dormitory towns and suburbs. Of course Edinburgh has more expensive property than locations a fraction of its size.
This report is garbage. We are told that the Highlands has seen an 800% increase in millionaires. But that massive hike brings us to the deeply disappointing figure of nine, up from a decidedly unimpressive one.
Please don't think I'm against numbers. Used correctly I love them. But what makes me really mad is that the truly interesting statistics are kept firmly locked behind closed doors. You can't get hold of them for love nor money.
I spent two days last week trying to get repossession figures for Scotland which would be roughly equivalent to the ones released by the courts in England and Wales. The Scottish Government, which I am told is responsible for publishing court statistics, tells me it doesn't break the data down in this way. Why not?
The most authoritative figures come from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), but these are UK-wide figures. The CML openly admits it doesn't have a clue what is happening in Scotland.
Fascinating, isn't it, that we can count million pound property sales down to a single unit but we have no idea how many children are being kicked out onto the streets because their parents cannot meet their mortgage repayments.
We always say Scotland doesn't have a repossession problem like south of the border. Well, perhaps this is the reason why. If you don't count the numbers, you don't have a problem.
More sensibly, law firms tell me not only are repossessions always with us, but the signs are they are increasing.
It's time the mortgage industry got a grip on reality. Last week the Financial Services Authority (FSA) banned a London broker for multiple offences of submitting false mortgage applications on his own and others' behalf.
The FSA's enforcement boss Jonathan Phelan went out of his way to point out that the watchdog was coming across increasing numbers of cases where brokers had encouraged borrowers to tell lies to get their dream home.
It's easy to see how the housing boom and credit bubble were built on lies and dodgy numbers. But then some of us knew that all along.
Hidden charges
COMPARISON websites which allow consumers to shop around for financial services at the click of a mouse button transformed all our lives and put huge downward pressure on the prices we have to pay.
But they are not perfect, and the FSA investigation into how standards can be improved is to be welcomed.
One concern is the influence which commissions play in the way different firms are promoted. In other words, do sites put companies which pay a bigger kickback higher up the best-buy lists? There is evidence to suggest some do.
Worse still is the use of 'estimated' premiums, so the price you are eventually charged is different from the one you were offered. There are also worries about the way cover is stripped to the barest minimum to keep the price down, and massive and sometimes hidden excesses are built in for the same purpose, but none of this is openly declared to the customer. It's only when you need to claim that you realise you've been had.
Bank on rising feesROYAL Bank of Scotland has increased its monthly fees by 95p on its packaged accounts following a recent similar move by Lloyds TSB. Not a fortune. Maybe. Elsewhere Nationwide has hiked its overdraft costs by a third. The cost of banking is going up. As we said it would.
The full article contains 808 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
