Remortgaging slowing down: loans for house purchase up

Remortgaging seemed to be holding up well as the market faced falling house prices, now it seems that Remortgaging activity is now slowing down, this is according to a report from the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

It seems like there has been a little reverse in figures, the fall in remortgage activity was accompanied by just a little rise in loans for house sales.

In the month of May, there were 71,000 remortgage loans taken out, this is a 14% drop from April, however it was a massive 23% drop from May 2007. The remortgage business as a whole was down 13% at just £9.6bn.

Mortgage loans picked up a little in May, with an increase of just 4% over April; overall 52,700 home loans were taken out. It is not all good news though, as both volume and value of house purchase loans are now 44% down over last year.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders are reporting that fixed-rate loans are now more popular, even though the average rate for one of these products are now around 7%. Over 66% of new mortgages were fixed-rate, compared to 59% in April.

Source