Mortgage News
Lending drops by 60% in two years
Lending for 2009 was down by 60% compared to 2007, despite an improvement in Q4, according to the latest figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML).
Total lending for 2009 was £143.6bn, down 43% from £254.1bn in 2008 and down 60% from the highest number on record of £362.6bn in 2007.
The drop was blamed on the unprecedentedly low volume of transactions in the early months of the year.
The total number of house purchase loans for the year was 517,000, fractionally up from 516,200 in 2008 but just over half of the pre-credit crunch level in 2007 of 1,015,100.
There were also 318,700 home mover loans in 2009, down only slightly from 322,500 in 2008 but down 52% from 657,800 in 2007. First-time buyer loans accounted for 198,200 of these, up slightly from 193,700 in 2008 but down 44% from 357,100 in 2007.
However, December’s news painted a more positive picture as loans to first-time-buyers hit a two year-high as buyers rushed to buy properties between £125,000 and £175,000 before the stamp-duty tax threshold expired.
Industry, not regulation, must lead later life lending change
Sponsored by Suffolk Building Society Intermediaries
In January, stamp duty would have added an additional 1% of the purchase price onto the transaction costs which buyers were desperate to avoid.
House purchase lending in general totalled 63,000 loans worth £8.5bn in December, up from 51,000 loans worth £7.1bn in November and from 33,000 worth £4.4bn in December 2008.
The number of loans for remortgage stayed the same as November at 28,000, with the value falling from £3.5bn to £3.4bn. This was down from 41,000 transactions at £5.7bn in December 2008.