According to the Council of Mortgage lenders we saw an improvement in mortgage lending of 7 percent in October, this being the first rise since July this year, but unfortunately is still 44 percent lower than in October 2007.

Last October mortgage lending totaled 33.4 billion whereas this October total mortgage lending was 18.7 billion although this is up from 17.5 billion in September.

Despite the Bank of England (BOE) base interest rate cuts the mortgage and housing market still looks gloomy, the outlook continues to show the market weakening even though October improved the figure in the previous month according to the CML.

It’s not just consumer confidents being affected by the ailing economic conditions the credit freeze and shortage of mortgage funding is also paying a huge part in the problem.

At present there are 11.7 million mortgages that total 1.2 trillion pounds in value.

Source: Reuters

Although this was a 4% rise over April, you still have to remember that this figure is still 44% lower than in May 2007.

While looking at these figures more closely, we find that there is a huge decline in the amount of people remortgaging for the month of May, it is down 14% from April and 23% lower year-on-year.

The CML are warning that things are set to get much worse before they get better, a result of first-time buyers now finding it much harder to get themselves on the property ladder, larger deposits and a good credit are to blame.

Loans for first-time buyers were up 4% in May from April however; this figures is still 41% lower than of May 2007.

Source