£· LMS (Legal Marketing Services) is one of the UK’s largest providers of outsourced property services, including conveyancing, remortgage, and IT services.
£· Each year LMS successfully manages some 130,000 transactions, helping to enable more than £15 billion in loans for intermediaries and lenders.
£· The LMS system is based on the company’s unique STARS (Servicer Tracking & Reporting System) technology which manages transactions electronically on-line to ensure speed, cost efficiency and quality of service.
£· To find out more about LMS, visit www.lms.com
Andy Knee, Chief Executive of LMS, comments on the Nationwide House Price Index:
“Latest house price figures align with growing views that the foot is coming off the gas in the UK property market, as tighter mortgage regulations and rising house prices take their toll. Although prices continue to increase, the speed with which they do so has slowed dramatically compared to recent months. Nationwide data showed that prices grew by 0.1% in July compared to the previous month, the slowest growth in over a year.
“But even so, prices remain a hefty hurdle for first time buyers to leap and affordability remains part of the critical issue. Although fewer in number, there are still some competitive deals on offer so it is vital that both first time buyers and existing home owners shop around. An interest rate rise is looming ever closer and the timing of the rise is key, given it will have a sizable effect on affordability with wages so stagnant. Remortgaging has already jumped by 9% in July amid fears of an imminent rate rise, and is a trend we fully expect to continue throughout the latter half of this year.*
“Continued lender support to First Time Buyers through Help to Buy and high LTV lending along with an increase in house building will help shift the balance between supply and demand — signs of which we are slowly starting to see.”
*LMS remortgage report — July.
