Best Loans News

Since the start of the credit crunch, two years ago, both the personal loan and home owner loan markets have been affected dramatically, leading to a severe drop in the total number of loan products available to consumers.

Over the course of this year, we have seen a slow but steady improvement in the number of available loan deals, as a few lenders tentatively dip their toes back into the water. But according to the latest report from the Bank of England, it seems likely that we might see an increase in the availability of new loan products over the course of the next three months.

The Trend in Lending report which has been recently published by the Bank of England, has shown that although banks and building societies have reduced their exposure to secured loans of all kinds, there are definite indications that lenders are becoming more confident about offering loans and we could therefore see an increase in secured loan availability over the next three months.

The total number of available home owner loan products has already increased over the last quarter of the year and many lenders are starting to relax their lending criteria slightly and offer higher loan to value products. Despite this optimistic news, any improvement is still likely to be slow and although the number of new purchase loans has seen considerable increases recently, loans for remortgage are still very subdued.

Michael Coogan of the Council of Mortgage Lenders said “The new report confirms that September saw a continuation of the two speed mortgage market, with lending for house purchase continuing to increase but remortgaging remaining weak. But, also as we have highlighted, funding conditions remain challenging, despite the encouraging signs of a slight thaw in wholesale funding markets.

Today’s report very much confirms our own assessment of market prospects, the most likely scenario is a slow and long drawn out recovery.”