Yesterday, I posted a chart that highlighted the 17 percent fall in gross mortgage lending between March 2008 and the same month last year. One of this blog's most frequent commenters - traderboy - was impressed but wanted to see how last months numbers stacked up against those from previous years.Gross mortgage lending in 2008 is down compared to 2007 and 2006. It is a little higher than 2005, but back then, the Bank of England tightened interest rates, and the housing bubble slowed somewhat. Going back a little further, this year's number looks a lot like 2004.
These numbers are not inflation adjusted. In real terms, the decline in March 2008 is much higher.
7 comments:
So you do requests now.
Alice,
Do you know what % of March 2008 lending was new lending as opposed to remortaging? This help in getting to the heart of the issue.
Regards,
Chefdave.
Chefdave
I know something remortgaging versus home purchases for February, but not March. The short answer is that remortgaging is a significant component of the total, while buy-to-let and other mortgages is also quite large.
I post something tomorrow.
Alice
these figs (presumably CML) do include remortgaging, so you'd have to take that out to get approvals for house purchase, which are the real indicator for where the housing market is going as they reflect transactions where someone actually bought a house. CML always do this (rather pointless) preview release concerning gross lending, but I prefer to wait for the BBA and BoE mortgage approvals figs a week or so later to get the really useful data.
chefdave
Just posted a chart on remortgaging versus regular lending. I hope it answers your query.
Thanks for the comments.
Alice
Tom,
Yes, the data is from the CML.
Alice
Thanks Alice! As I thought, it is still surprisingly high, but as ChefDave and Tom say, it's probably due to remortgaging.
Keep up the good work!
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