In the month of March, remortgages rose by sixteen percent, totalling seventeen percent over the year, as a predicted rise in interest rates prompts borrowers to take out home loans sooner rather than later. According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, a huge 33,900 remortgage loans were taken out.
Numbers for the first quarter of 2011 show that remortgaging activity accounted for thirty-seven percent of all lending that took place, an improvement on the thirty percent of the last quarter of 2010. As high as this percentage is, the mortgage market is still suffering, and needs to see much more of an improvement before it can be seen to be in a healthy state again – this looks less likely to occur soon if the expected spike in interest rates comes about.
Director General of CML, Michael Coogan warned that there was likely to be little change in the market in the next quarters to come, due to activity taking a hit from such outside factors as the royal wedding, the Easter weekend and the large number of bank holidays all coming at once.
The number of mortgages advanced for house purchase was up from February by twenty-four percent to 37,800. Still, this is down from the same period last year, by a substantial seventeen percent. House purchase lending saw a huge drop of twenty-six percent in the first three months of this year.
Director of easyroommate.co.uk, Jonathan Moore, is philosophical about the current state he finds the market in, describing it as ‘treading water’, and cites the depleted mortgage funds as the reason first time buyers have struggled so badly in the first quarter. Not only that, but people who are looking to get a foot on the property ladder are looking at terribly high prices and living costs that are steadily mounting. Mr Moore sees these first results as a picture of a ‘miserable spring’ which only looks set to continue as the year goes on.
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