"Lending to improve in the coming months, as employment and earnings continue to pick up and the impact of recent stamp duty reforms start to feed through."
- Council of Mortgage Lenders
Mortgage lending in the United Kingdom declined to its lowest level in almost two years, namely since April 2013, as the property market in the country seems to be undergoing a correction phase. Halifax survey has recently shown a decrease in UK house prices of 0.3% between January and February. However, the overall situation can not be named as dramatic, while growing economy and low inflation will increase activity of both lenders and mortgage takers to engage into new deals on the housing credit market. According to data from the Council of Mortgage Lenders, in total the UK financial institutions lent 13.4 billion pounds in February of this year, down 9% both on monthly and annual basis. Even weaker indicator was last time registered as early as April 2013 at 12.4 billion pounds, when UK property market has only started expanding considerably and economy picked up after the double-dip recession.
At the same time, some market analysts are pointing on seasonality of the data, underlying traditional weakness during the month of February and at the start of the year in general. They also add that real incomes in Britain became rising after four years of downward change and employment is gaining further momentum. Accompanied by recent stamp duty reforms in the country, experts suggest lending is going to rebound during upcoming months.
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