Mortgage Lending Picks Up in June

Sector: Banking & Finance

20th July 2010

Mortgage lending picked up in June, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML). Gross lending, which includes lending to people remortgaging as well as house buyers, rose by 15% in June to £13.1bn. This was 7% higher than a year ago and also the biggest monthly figure so far this year. However, the CML said June's increase was just a seasonal pick-up and that lending remained subdued. "There are signs of house prices stabilising and more properties coming onto the market following the abolition of home information packs" said the CML's economist CML Paul Samter."This may improve liquidity in the market, but transaction levels are subdued and likely to remain so while access to credit remains constrained," he added.

Subdued

Both of the main monthly house price surveys, from the Halifax and the Nationwide, show that prices have been levelling off in recent months, after rising briskly since the spring of 2009. And the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) predicted last week that house prices in the UK might start to fall as the number of sellers start to outweigh the number of buyers. The subdued outlook for the property market was underlined by comments from the Bank of England, in the latest edition of its monthly publication Trends in Lending. "The major UK lenders expected demand for secured lending to remain muted," it said.

Source: BBC News - Read the full article >