Building Societies See An Increase In Number Of Loan Applications
As consumer confidence in the housing market and increased availability of competitively priced home owner loan and mortgage deals steadily improves as we head into 2010, lenders across all sectors of the market have seen an increase in the number of new home owner loan applications being made and loans being offered to customers, who only a few months ago may not have been able to get the loan they required.
The latest figures from the Building Societies Association (BSA), have shown that the number of new loans from its members increased by 15 per cent in December last year, above the figures for the previous month.
The BSA figures show that gross lending on new loans was £1.8 million during the month of December, compared with just £1.6 million over the course of November. Although this shows a healthy increase in loan numbers in the space of just one month, the overall figure for December is still significantly lower than it was twelve months earlier, when there was a total of £2,312 million offered in new loans by building societies. The BSA have said, however, that it expects to see new loan figures reduce again for 2010, as it believes many people were trying to complete on their house purchase before the end of the stamp duty holiday.
Paul Broadhead of the BSA commented on the figures, he said “Whilst it is encouraging to see an increase in gross lending at the end of the year when activity would typically decline, we believe it is likely that this rise can be attributed to a rush from buyers keen to complete transactions before the end of the year in order to beat the removal of the stamp duty holiday. Despite this rise, total gross lending in 2009 was only half of that in 2008 and it is likely to remain at low levels until funding conditions improve.”
