The group chief executive of Barclays has been talking about the property market, expressing criticism over the mortgage sector.
Mortgage lending over the last decade was "madness", the group chief executive of Barclays has claimed.
John Varley told Sky News that the period will in future be "seen as an anomaly rather than a normalcy". He said that the problem lay in the fact that loan-to-value ratios were available at "100 percent or 115 percent or 125 percent of the value of the house".
Mr Varley also warned that he expected house prices to fall further. This was down to his company's estimate that the fall "from the top to the bottom" would be between 25 and 30 percent. "We're probably about halfway through that period, so in other words we've got another ten to 15 percent to fall between now and the end of next year," he claimed.
Most reports have suggested that the property market is in continued decline. Earlier in the month, statistics from the Halifax revealed a 2.6 percent fall in prices during November, a year-on-year decline of 14.9 percent. This left the average UK house priced at £163,605.
The Bank of England has also introduced a number of cuts to its base rate of interest - leaving it at its lowest level in over 50 years - in an attempt to boost mortgage availability and stimulate the economy.
