Loans market is developing confidence and stability

After years of a hesitant existence, the UK property derivatives market is developing confidence and stability that has generated a momentum of excitement. Property derivatives had a small cohort of advocates since the mid 1990s, but for most of that period only Barclays Capital was involved. The market remained illiquid and one-sided. Apart from rare activity, the market did not start to grow until 2005. Transactions happened occasionally but volumes were very low. The first publicly traded property derivatives were the futures that were traded on the London Futures and Options Exchange (FOX), introduced on 9 May, 1991. Pension funds used property derivatives when they first came out. The exchange offered four contracts based on indices for commercial property capital value, commercial rent, residential property and mortgage rates. The underlying indices of the FOX contracts were the IPD capital growth index, the IPD rental growth index, the Nationwide Anglia House Price (NAHP) index and the FOX Mortgage Interest Rate (MIR) index. While the IPD indices are based on appraisals and reflect commercial properties, theNAHPis a transaction-based hedonic index on residential properties (see property indices).

Unfortunately, trading was suspended just a few months after the launch. It became public that trading volumes were artificially boosted using so-called wash trades, i.e. offsetting deals that in the end produce neither a gain nor a loss. However, real trading volume was much lower than expected. The discovery of this mischief hastened the contracts’ demise. In sum, the market was open only from May to October of 1991.