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The number of mortgages taken out in June increased by 23% to 45,000 in June, the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said today.
The total home loans paid out during the month was only 6% lower than in June last year, adding substance to claims that the mortgage market is set for recovery.
There was also a significant rise in the number of first-time buyers getting on to the property ladder, with 17,200 mortgages paid out to people buying their first home, 26% more than during May. But the days of huge loan-to-value levels still appear to be in the past, with the average first-time-buyer's deposit making up 25% of a home's value.
The latest statistics come despite banks coming under pressure to lend more, having received billions of pounds of support from the Government.
Tax-payer-owned Northern Rock, which said last week that it expects to miss its £5 billion mortgage-lending target for 2009 by about £1 billion, warned that 40% of its borrowers have fallen into negative equity.
The Financial Services Authority's latest statistics on mortgages said that repossessions in the first quarter of 2009 soared 62% on last year's level, to 14,825.
Reader views (2)
- Keith Price, Luton England
You sir, are crazy - Brown has done nothing more than postpone the inevitable financial meltdown of this country, he persists in following a spite ridden scorched earth policy in the hope that the next incumbents can be painted as the villians when they have to deal with the rampant debt that threatens to sink us.
He is a liability as PM, he was a disaster as chancellor, and will be long remembered as a bullying failure of a man who took this nation into the Abyss. He and his ZanuLiebour cronies have done more damage in the last 12 years than any enemy of the state could dream of inflicting. 12 years of waste, 12 years of failure, it will take 50 years to repair the damage this odious bunch of hypocrites, failures, parasites, liars and criminals have inflicted.
- M, London
Well done Gordon Brown for rescuing the country from the worldwide economic recession, which has hit many other countries far harder than it has us here in the UK
- Keith Price, Luton England
