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Mortgage lending falls £1.5bn at Santander to £24.6bn – results

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  • 23/02/2017
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Mortgage lending falls £1.5bn at Santander to £24.6bn – results
Santander’s annual results confirmed the third largest UK mortgage provider’s overall lending fell from £26.1bn in 2015 to almost £24.6bn over 2016, although the borrower mix remained broadly unchanged.

Lloyds also confirmed a drop in mortgage lending yesterday to total £38bn, down from £39bn in 2015 and £40bn a year earlier.

Barclays, which also reported its annual results today, confirmed lending to owner occupiers of almost £19bn, suggesting a significant year-on-year uplift without the buy-to-let figures.

Santander UK confirmed a 2016 profit before tax of £1.9bn, up 43% against 2015.

Lending to home movers fell to 45% of the mix at £11.07bn, down from 49% of its lending last year, where remortgage business rose to £7.09bn at 29% of the mix, against 24% last year and buy-to-let lending held steady at 9% or £2.2bn of lending. First-time buyer lending completions nudged down to total £4.2bn of all lending.

The lender said: “We continued to build our buy-to-let book by focusing on non-professional landlords, as this segment is closely aligned with residential mortgages and accounts for the majority of the volume in the buy-to-let market.”

The lender completed 12,400 buy-to-let mortgages, at an average LTV of 67% last year. The bank also lent £1.2bn of further advances and flexible mortgage drawdowns.

Geographically, Santander continued to mainly lend in London at 27% of new business and the South East at 34%, along similar lines to last year. The average loan size in London and the South East was £264,000 and £144,000, respectively, across the rest of the UK, producing a £198,000 UK average.

The bank said its average LTV on new business is 65%, mirroring the previous year, with lending of 85% LTV adding up to 17% of new business flow.

This year, Santander which currently completes 75% of its mortgages through brokers, launched an online mortgage application system and suggested applications can be completed in less than an hour with an instant decision after allowing customers to upload supporting documents, such as payslips and bank statements online.

The lender also became the first UK mortgage provider to launch a minimum procuration fee floor of £400 on the 13 February on loans of £25,000 and above.

Meanwhile, the bank said it expects to see slower growth in 2017 with continued low interest rates alongside the possibility of rising unemployment.

“Inflation is expected to breach the Bank of England target of 2% in 2017 as the impact of rising oil prices and sterling depreciation is felt,” it added.

As a backdrop to all the results, see here for the full list of UK mortgage lending gross lending in 2015.

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