First-time buyers are still being given the runaround by lenders. And despite a trebling in the number of mortgage products available over the last two years, there are 2,000 fewer first-time deals than four years ago.
According to Moneyfacts, there are currently 183 deals available for first-time buyers, compared to 62 in June 2009.
Of those, 31 are offering 95% loan-to-values, compared with just six two years ago.
However, the number of first-time mortgage products is still a tiny drop in the ocean compared with the height of the market.
At the start of the credit crunch in September 2007, there were 2,583 mortgage products available to first-time buyers. Of those first-time buyer mortgages, 1,489 deals were available offering 90–95% LTV, making up 58% of the first-time buyer market.
And despite the small recovery in first-time buyer mortgage products now being seen, it is getting harder to borrow.
According to research by national surveying firm e-surv, the number of first-time buyers fell in May after lenders tightened up their criteria.
The firm says there was a drop in purchase approvals for first-time buyers last month. Home purchase approvals for homes under £125,000 accounted for only 23% of all approvals in May, down from 27% in April and less than the 24% monthly average for the whole of last year.
If the e-surv research is correct, it means that homes for first-time buyers have become less, not more, accessible.
The total number of house purchase approvals last month was down 7.9% on the same month last year, according to e-surv.
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Comments
PeeBee – Ill have a pop at answering rantnrave’s question………
Right, rant,
It’s a difficult one to answer as it’s not something that can be done effectively and with a decent reduction based on just 1 conversation..
The right way to manage a vendor is to build credibility with them, talk to the regularly (twice a week) regardless of viewing activity etc and I have always found that allocating one member staff to manage them is very effective and that individual is accountable for the ‘well being’ of all the vendors they manage – this also ensures you don’t have one neg looking after 40 odd clients as that cant be done, well not right anyway.
If an agent follows the above principles then the relationship you have with you vendors is strong and they trust you and your team to the point that if you believe a price reduction is needed they will believe / trust your judgement and take the advice
Of course if you just fly about listing houses and never talk to them, never give any follow up, never build a proper relationship with them you end up with a massive but poor quality register of clients’ who hate you and go elsewhere once the agreement allows, happily to places like Jonnie & Co where we then get them down to the right money and sold.
Oh and one last thing – more relevant to the article on touting but there is an agent here that kicks the crap out of everyone that is on the market with someone else, but get this, the dopey pillocks don’t talk to the clients they already have and loose them as quick as they can list second time round tosh that makes Property Bee buzz like a ba****d, we always say that the way to get ****** & Co to stop calling you is to go on the market with them!
………………enough now, I feel all sensible and I don’t like it
Jonnie
Where’s twit1234 , hopefully very ill and not just on hols, I hate to say it I am almost missing the twaddle he posts, or has he morphed into Mike Wilson?
Pee Bee - Round my way, there seems to be a chronic shortage of those EAs you mention with skills in talking down vendors' unrealistic expectations. Would you have time to post an example of how such a conversation could be had?
rantnrave: Not entirely sure where you are coming from there, matey - however at the risk of having picked you up wrong...
...those "caught up in the middle" are generally experienced in the art of sorting out the wheat from the chaff. If a property is vastly overpriced then they will aim to bring down the vendors starship-high illusions (although it has to be said that the very fact they took the property on the market in the first place makes their job so much harder...). If a buyers' sights are set too high, then again they will try in the nicest possible way to lower their expectations to nearer the mark. IF same said buyer simply wants a 'seven bed mansionette' for the price of a tatty semi in Dogsville - then the Agent will give them approximately one second of their time before moving on to serious buyers.
It is ONLY serious buyers and serious sellers who put petrol in company cars/pay the rent/salaries/produce profits in the Estate Agency game. The rest cost money to service needlessly. Show me ONE Agent who deals specifically in the lost causes - and I will show you a locked door with a dark office and a mountain of bills behind it.
PeeBee - which is all fine, unless you're caught in the middle and try to make a living from the buying and selling of property.
Dozytool: 2.7x joint is not crazy lending. On another story, "FTB Dan" claims to have been offered £400k on £75k joint incomes - that is 5.33x joint!
Would YOU want such a millstone - I CERTAINLY wouldn't!!
Surprisingly, neither does FTB Dan - but of course he just expects sellers to bring those £400k properties down to a level HE wants to borrow...
God loves a tryer - pity he isn't planning to buy from God, though... ;o)
@PeeBee
At agreement in principle stage my lender said they'd give me 2.7 times joint income. After examining bank statements, p60's etc. they have offered 2.7 times joint income. Granted, it's not yet in my sweaty palm but seems totally straightforward.
@Peebee, I disagree, you cannot blame the EA, they just want business and know they earn from lots of volume, not 1 high priced sale a week. Nor can you blame vendors for being greedy. You have to blame these last few buyers, who continue to overpay.
Eventually even these guys will be exhausted, or their disposable income will be eroded by inflation and tax. And then after so many sellers have held off waiting for the prices to return will prices collapse. There are so many people putting off a sale, but as soon as they all realise that the only way is down there will be a flood of property.
Brit1234: Let's have a reasoned discussion, eh?
You state: "Is it really a bad thing if the banks don't lend to some one who can't save a 10% Deposit?" Maybe not - however surely there is more to examine in order to establish the applicants' suitability than this one factor? WHY has the applicant not got a 10% deposit? Could it be that in order to provide a roof over his/her/their family's heads, the applicant might have just rented a property which would have eaten into existing savings and monthly disposable income?
With regard to the sellers pricing high comment - then as far as I am concerned the fault comes straight back to the Agent. The Agent is under NO OBLIGATION to accept an instruction - they make a business decision whether to list a property. I find it perverse that of all groups of Agents, the RICS members feel it prudent to state this, as they are allegedly the commensurate professionals, as backed up by their professional status!
As to whether banks are calling the shots - I'm with the Agents on that one. Banks ARE cherry-picking - and then picking the best of the first pick. Thing is - they will tell EVERYONE who asks that they can have £'x', based upon set criteria. Go through the process - and see how much they GIVE!
Poles apart...
Mike, I think the housing market is in dire straits. Most people have grown so accustomed to yoy price increases that they cannot accept the new reality of peoples budgets being squeezed on all fronts, taxation, inflation and as soon as the international bond markets decline to fund the UK governments chronic overspend than interest rates will rise as well. House prices have only one direction to go and that is down. Most buyers know this and are holding off, of course you still get some that are prepared to buy at this level, but volumes are on the floor with many EA’s doing 1 sale a week.
For my own situation I don’t fancy renting for the rest of the cycle which will take a good 5 to 7 years from here. So I will buy at the right price, if I can find a sensible vendor and I will either borrow the max and rent out a bigger place to lodgers for ten years to pay off the mortgagee, or I will borrow the min and overpay the mortgage on something modest so its paid off in 10 years. Either way, I am going to take out a 10 year fixed rate deal, as there is no way I am exposing myself to interest rates when live in a country that cannot live within its means. We may not get as bad as Greece, but we certainly won’t walk away unscathed either. Things are going to get very nasty over the next ten years.
On the RICS survey today it appears increasing amounts of estate agents are blaming sellers for pricing to high to sell in current circumstances.
It seems there has been a ongoing change of blame from lenders to sellers prices. May that continue. Banks are willing to allow me to borrow far more than I am happy with and believe all this banks not lending to be a red herring.
Is it really a bad thing if the banks don't lend to some one who can't save a 10% Deposit?
On Reuters this morning ...
""Standard & Poor's on Monday cut Greece's credit ratings by three notches, saying the country is increasingly likely to restructure its debt in a way the ratings agency would consider a default"
Greece will default one way or the other. If Spain does too - the big Spanish bank referred to in this thread will be in the manure in a big way. Of course they are still willing to lend daft amounts of money into the UK mortgage market - they bought one of the biggest BTL lenders with massive exposure to UK property via their insane BTL lending.
The balls are way up in the air and those with the most to lose are determined to snare more people into debt to keep them there.
And @FTB Dan
You're in a good position at the lowest interest rates for generations. When you buy - do allow for the fact the loan is for 25 years and, in that time, interest rates could easily double. Of course you can't allow for armageddon scenarios, but you can allow for likely scenarios - and mortgage rates at 10% at some time in the next 25 years is by no means unlikely.
I really must disabuse a few of you of this idea that banks should be punished by government for not lending more. Its completely misunderstood the reality.
It is government that is increasing the Banks capital requirements and the only way to comply is to buy gilts. Or to put it another way, to fund the governments overspend every month by loaning them the money. So of course the government is not going to punish banks for doing what they are told, letting our bloated state suck up all the spare cash. If you want more credit for the free market you need to be campaigning for some real cuts to government spending, not these fake cuts the BBC is banging on about.
And besides, if your credit worthy there is still plenty of money for you. I am a FTB and I was offered 5.5x Joint Income. I have far more money available to me that I would actually be willing to borrow. All I need now is price to become vaguely sensible and I’m set, although I fear that may well take a good year from here.
@Chas
Yes, my calculator is broken. So, it appears is my ability to read and multiply in my head. I blame my age.
Today's housing market seems to demand that both parents work and that kids are stuck in nurseries.
Heaven help them if interest rates go up or one of them can't work for a while.
Mike Wilson
Calculator not working this morning?
5 x 52 = 260
@FTBer
You said: "I'm a 35yo FTBer. When I applied for a mortgage with my wife last year we were offered 5x our joint income on a near enough 5% 3yr fixed deal from the big Spanish bank. We had £30k for a deposit and our income was £52k. We budgeted for a 3.5x salary mortgage at 5% as our outgoings for nursery costs were high. The money is there for people like us. Lending is not tight or even hard to come by, unless you think people shouldn't have to prove their incomes."
5 times your joint income! Are you serious?! You were offered a 520k mortgage with a 30k deposit? At 5%? So they were willing to lend you 520k at 5% which means - on a repayment mortgage - you'd face repayments of about 3 grand a month - or the vast majority of your take home pay.
Did you notice the guy in the lender's office measuring you up for a straitjacket.
Heaven help you when interest rates rise after the 3 years or one of you gets ill. Sheer, undiluted insanity.
@Industry Observer
I guess that's their problem for buying a 1 bed flat that is only suitable for 2 years and not bothering to save any additional money. I mean, what did they think was gonna happen? You can't legislate for stupidity and I would have thought that any EA worth his salt would advise a minimum 5 year time frame.
Anyway, I've learned that lesson so am doing away with the FTB rabbit hutch and going straight for the 3 bed.
We're borrowing 2.7 times joint income of £50k. Hardly Mr and Mrs Rockefella.
Last couple of comments on this thread
@Sibley
I don't understand why you'd welcome a generation being frozen out of home ownership. The lateral impact of it is very wide ranging from social stability, and job mobility to passing on wealth and sorting your own pension out after the fiasco of the worst Chancellor in my memory had finished screwqing the pensions inductry.
@Dozytoll
Well done you and no-one said it was impossible or indeed that it should be made too easy. I have always been in the "home ownership should be looked on as a privilege not a right" camp.
But you are average earnbers. Wera ere talkiign joint in your case. And we were referring to a 1 bed flat. Look at the figures for a 2nd time buyer looking to move up the ladder after say 2 years in their one bed flat. They now need two beds, she is expecting hence the need to move.
Existing property has hardly moved in price, now they need to buy at £175K minimum round here so they will need another £30K+ deposit to add to their equity.
It's not just the FTB in themselves and their purchase, it's the need for them to be on the bottom tung otherwise you may as well pull up the ladder.
I take all points made and everyone is entitled to their view. But the reality and the impact on the market is not at all good at the moment for the vast majority of would be home ownesr and indeed would be traders up.
A couple of weeks ago I found myself on a stag weekend with all my mates mates that I didn’t know and turns out one of them was a fairly senior chap at one of the banks……………
now don’t get me wrong with the delights of all day drinking and the other stag do pastimes that Marbella has to offer we didn’t talk much shop but we did find a sober moment and it appears from what he said that providing you are not a complete lost cause / credit check nightmare there is no problem getting approved for a reasonable mortgage deal.
The next round came along so we binned it off at that point but there is no reason to doubt his view.
Jonnie
@Industry Observer
I'm also on the south coast and £30k is in the same ballpark as my deposit. We are 2 average earners and we scrimped and saved for 2 years. Not easy but hardly impossible.
The banks make a handy scapegoat for the ills of the housing market and the unfocused "it's not fair" attitude of many 20 somethings. From my experience, as somebody actually appling for a mortgage, it was easy peasy.
"...I'm on the south coast and to save a 25% deposit even for a one bed flat here means saving £30K and I don't know many mid twenty something's that find that too easy either."
In fairness IO, that is simply symptomatic of the UK debt-binge. Conservative lending would preclude such a pitiful state of affairs, no?
Which is why I welcome 'the taps being turned off'. Sure, FTBs will be excluded from the market for years to come although it will allow market to correct itself.
Mike Wilson is 100% correct it must be something to do with the 60+ generation being able to see it. The worst by far is yet to come and I think the Lloyds figure elsewhere of 10% down at the end of 2012 will be a very lucky excape.
It was a close run thing with Greece first time around, then Ireland nearly collapsed and needs more money, Portugal is still a shambles soon to be followed by Spain and Greece is on its way back for more. One key problem is the population is just not prepared to see their benefits and pensions et al being reduced.
If as In France this is because in some sectors it is because they have taken lower wages in exchange for welfare benefits and provisions that Unite and Unison can only dream of for their members in this country, then who can blame them for manning the barricades?
Compared to the last big PHC late 80's early 90's - and we haven't had another one here yet and I hope we don't, - we've got different problems. The market recovered relatively quicly for one very simple reason. Those who could afford to borrow did so, because the actual funding wasn't restricted except to those that could afford it. But 95% loansd etc continued. Only 100% was stopped and that only for a short while.
This time round you've got plenty of people who could borrow on the LTV and income multiples being allowed a few years ago. I'm not saying they should be allowed to and 3.5 + 1 is the sensible joint limit. But the lenders won't lend to them on those previous terms and so restrict the flow by demanding big deposits. I don't blame them but it's then cause and effect.
@Dozytool
What the fuss is about is the 25% deposit as per the example you quote. For those who think that is right and that prudent lending is the order of the day that's fine. But the banks are not being prudent they are being incredibly cautious. It wasn't a lack of prudent lending that caused the problems. It was a flood or irresponsible lending.
Link that then to traded packages that even the banks own external auditors (and of course any regulator) don't understand and you have the crisis.
I have no problem with limiting lending to 80% or even 85% of LTV (as is Law in some European countries) but I don't know where you are but I'm on the south coast and to save a 25% deposit even for a one bed flat here means saving £30K and I don't know many mid twenty something's that find that too easy either.
I take your point Dozytool but I have been at the very sharp end of family finances for the past 2 years and I can tell you without hesitation that the banks, and above all credit card companies and similar lenders, have behaved appallingly and continue to do so. I excuse no-one debt, especially irresponsible debt. But sensible lending isn't too difficult either - long as you are prepared to earn less profits and thus less bonuses.
@Jay
But it doesn't work like that. We have a housing market with a government controlled lack of supply. The planning laws have ensured that there will always be demand for housing - in particular for nice housing. Even if everyone in the country had a house - there would still be massive demand because people want to live somewhere nicer.
This endless demand means that as soon as the credit taps are turned on, prices rise. They have done it relentlessly for the 60 years or so that I have been on this planet.
If 100 year 1% fixed rate mortgages were released tomorrow, house prices would go to the moon. And, prices would stop when repayments became unaffordable set against current wages. This is why the housing market has not crashed yet (in London and the South East and most of the South West) - the unaffordability point was reached - and maintained by slashing the BOE rate to 0.5% and offering tracker mortgages at 2% - anthing to keep the balls in the air (at the time - 2008/9).
One thing people on this site ought to start getting clear in their head is that there is no way out of this mess. The economy is not going to grow nicely for a few years so we can all start paying down the debt - the debt is too big for that and our current economic structures demand endless increases in debt. When debt is overwhelming at the lowest interest rates for a generation - there is nowhere else to go.
What form this crisis will take eventually I cannot predict - but the end of Fractional Reserve Banking is one possibility.
And before you all start the old 'that will never be allowed to happen' mantra, believe me, if you think governments can control what is going on now - you believe in fairies and nanny sorting everything out.
Wait unti the first default in Europe - probably Greece - and then watch the blue touchpaper being lit.
I'm a 35yo FTBer. When I applied for a mortgage with my wife last year we were offered 5x our joint income on a near enough 5% 3yr fixed deal from the big Spanish bank. We had £30k for a deposit and our income was £52k. We budgeted for a 3.5x salary mortgage at 5% as our outgoings for nursery costs were high. The money is there for people like us. Lending is not tight or even hard to come by, unless you think people shouldn't have to prove their incomes. What is hard to come by is a realistic vendor.
@Industry Observer
I still don't think that over reaction is the right way of looking at it. There is less money available for lending than during the boom so, from the banks point of view, why not lend it where it'll generate the best return? If a bank has to keep significantly more cash in reserve for 85% LTV and higher then it's not in their interest to lend cheaply at such levels.
I got a mortgage approved just last week. FTB, 75% LTV, sensible income multiple, no problems whatsoever. I don't understand what all the fuss is about.
@Dozytool
Ray Evans is right.
The problem these days is you don't have some old fart like me sat behind a Nationwide desk in a local office interviewing applicants and assessing them. Actually back then I was a young fart but well trained over many years and not given a mortgage mandate until I had proved I could handle it responsibly. That started at £25K and ended in 1990 at £300K
And knowing that mandate could be reduced or even worse, removed entirely. The embarrassment of that for me with the local business community would have been excruciating.
What do you have now?
No local bank manager in sight, centralised systems, automatic rating systems and so on and so on plus of course pressure to cross sell every product possible.
No human element of judgement in the process at all. And what do you get when you use such systems - a dumbing down and standardisation.
The problem is the standardisation about 5 years ago included letting people borrow basically whatever they wanted to. I ask you - 125% self certified mortgages have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous and guaranteed to cause trouble?
The banks are over reacting and very badly. I won't bore you with all my personal financial details but suffice to say I could probably service a mortage of £150K (x6 what I have o/s now) at far higher interest rates than today and could also service a credit card limit double at least my present NatWest highest one of £13,050. And still pay it off in full each month.
So what does HSBC do about 18 months ago - send me a standard letter they probably sent to hundreds of thousands of customers as they should have done on many card accounts but too late. But in my case saying they were reducing my credit limit from £7500 to £4000. This for a customer of 10 years standing and who has paid off his balance in full every single month.
Over reaction - Ray I'll try and think of some stronger words!!!
Right, since about 1996 everyone started to feel better, less people were worried about loosing their jobs, loads of new exciting stuff got invented and became a whole industry called IT and everyone to ugly or stupid to work in IT got a brilliant job with the government.
We all felt good, had money and spent it, every year we all got paid more and more and spent more and more, then we got credit cards and when they got a bit rumpy some of us remortgaged or kept a bit of the equity when we moved up market and brought cars and other brilliant stuff.
This went on a bit and then in 2007 all the banks got a bit panicky about whether some former trailer trash Americans could keep up the payments on their house, then they decided that they couldn’t, then they got all in a sweat about it and decided that no one could and everyone started feeling worried, especially the most influential ones – the money markets, who told everyone the bundles of mortgages they had were toxic and not worth much, this meant no one wanted them anymore and no one made new bundles
So, here we are now, all a bit worried but to different degrees and not sure when we will all feel happy again
At least that’s how I recall it
Jonnie
Ray Evans an expert in credit risk as well as the property market.
In my view there are words for the banks current attitude, who in the main caused the problems. Over reaction.
Jay - I don't think the situation can be so easily summarised.
People went to the banks and were surprised / delighted at how much they were allowed to borrow. This fuelled their demand to move up the ladder, get a bigger place etc. Of course, if many people are doing the same then the money chasing houses increases, while the supply catches up (it takes time to build the things!). In any market, this results in rapid price rises, as seen in the UK housing market during the previous decade.
The average borrower back then assumed however that banks were doing proper risk assessments of their credit worthiness. The lenders threw caution out of the window though, resulting in the situation we have now where many who borrowed in the last few years are struggling to make repayments even at record low interest rates.
@Jay
Unfortunately though there is something in what you say I think Mike Wilson is right. For example if I offered you £20 notes for £21 you wouldn't be interested but if I offered them to you for £15 you'd stampede into my office so quick the desk would end up 60 feet from the windoow.
3
I too was at the sharp end and with a desk not far from the branch window when lending for NBS for over 20 years. I can assure you it is the availability of money and the cost of it that drives demand for any consumer item.
If the funding is not available you can have all the demand in the world but no sales. And the demand soon wanes when it is known that trying to buy is a waste of time and effort. That's where many FTB's are now even if they have a decent deposit - because the banks are restricting what they will lend though a variety of mechanisms including LTV, interest rates and basically the security and prospects of the applicant's job.
You are rioght those wanting to buy will fuel any market - but just see what controls it if they don't have all the money they need in readies. If they have to borrow any of it from any source at all if that source either doesn't have it or does but imposes such rigours on the would be borrower that they cannot get the funds, then it is the funder that is dictating.
Easy money makes it easy to borrow, scarcity of it does not.
In other news lemmings are prevented from jumping off cliff by ten-foot wall. Cue impassioned rhetoric from govt imploring the wall-builders to remove said obstacle. Lemmings rejoice.
@Mike Wilson,
You are clearly most passionate about this issue and post regularly with a common theme, that being the banks controlled house prices and are responsible for many being priced out of the market.
Surely you might consider the fact that they were selling a product (mortgages) to a market that had a demand and appetite to buy houses, your posts would suggest that you believe the banks flooded the market with various products and the buyers came rushing through their doors.
I have been very much at the forefront of the market for 20 years – in so much as my desk is 6ft away from the house buying high street and I have probably handled over 4000 sales in that time and my recollection of the last few years is that people wanting to buy fuelled the market and lenders fed the demand, not caused the demand
@James
You said: "Low risk high margin lending with no competition in the sector - even the banks that were sound and did not require a bail out are not lending competitively "
What do you consider 'competitive'?
Let's say Bank A never got involved in the nonsense - always lent based on sensible salary multiples and with some sort of deposit required.
That doesn't isolate them from the insane lending practices of Banks B to Z who drove the market up.
Bank A still has to look at a property and think ... it is likely that this property is overpriced by X% because its price is still based on the insane lending of other banks in the past ... therefore, we will only lend a maximum of (say) 80% of the current price and we (as always) will only lend based on sensible salary multiples.
Even banks that did not get involved in the madness are, of course, affected by it. Just as we all are.
"First time buyers still being given hard time by lenders"
In shock news today banks reveal that they are being careful who they lend their savers' money to.
Contrary to practices in what became known as the 'licence to print money' years, banks are now taking care to ensure that young people are not landed with suicidal mortgages at what are, in historical terms, very low interest rates.
Having lent in a reckless fashion in those boom years and having put their savers' money at such risk that, at one point, queues strectched for miles as people waited to withdraw all THEIR money from Northern Rock - banks have now realised that current property prices are such that a move to the downside is more likely than not.
To protect THEIR SAVERS' MONEY, banks are now insisting that anyone buying a property puts in a considerable deposit - to protect the bank, and their savers', from downward moves in the housing market.
All seems very sensible to me and to wish for anything different means you might as well wish that the last 13 years had never taken place.
I certainly do.
I don't think that "frozen out" is a particularly accurate description. Many FTB's are simply not stupid enough to want a 95% honeytrap mortgage on a rip off rate at this point in the cycle.
They see peers who bought towards the end of the boom, stuck with negative equity and a growing family in a small starter home and rightly realise that saving up is a sensible policy.
Saving is the new borrowing.
Couldn't agree more.
With a s/e son in law in a fledgling maintenance contractor company entering its third year of trading in August I have been appalled at how he has been treated by HSBC (shunned is a more apt word). When I was at NBS 35 years ago there was a saying in the industry "Grab the security" and it originated from Barclays antics. If Bank of Mum and Dad hadn't been able and willing to help his business would never have survived and they'd have ost their house as well.
But you are dead right James and they are all just as bad as each other and this will go on for a few years while they rebuild their capital bases. Linked to the article on Lloyds today and house prices to end 2012 and with the general cuts only just starting to bite and not really having their full impact until early next year what a winter of discontent 2011/12 could be.
It's going to be very tough for the next 18 months and the 10% drop figure sounds to me about right for many areas. And that assumes the negative equity and possession positions don't worsen as jobs are affected by the cuts and it is highly likely that they will be.
As I have said before in other posts static at best is all prices can hope for, but as long as first time buyers are frozen out then unless everyone is trading down or a cash purchaser the upper end of chains cannot go anywahere - someone has to come in on the lowest rung of the ladder.
What a stitch up this whole issue is becoming for our younger generation
The banks have never had it so good.
Low risk high margin lending with no competition in the sector - even the banks that were sound and did not require a bail out are not lending competitively
They should be prosecuted by the OFT