Mortgage Lending Declines Further

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML)  today announced the results of it’s latest survey into mortgage lending, According to there figures lending has declined further in January 2009. Despite successive interest rate cuts lending for first time buyers declined by 51% over this time last year, with lending for remortgages and home movers decliining by 52% and 53% respectively, again over January 2008.Director General of the CML, Michael Coogan said in a statement

“January and February are usually the quietest months in the mortgage market. The current withdrawal of many specialist, small and foreign lenders from new lending has created a huge gap in the capacity to fund mortgages to match consumer demand and this is continuing in 2009.”

The Council of Mortgage Lenders’ members account for 98% of all residential mortgage lending in the UK. Their members are the banks, building societies and other lenders who together have loans worth over £1.2 trillion in the current mortgage lending market.