Lenders To Offer More Loans Through The Rest Of This Year
At a time when interest is beginning to pick up in the housing market and estate agents and surveyors are saying that more people are entering the market, there have been renewed calls for banks and building societies to start offering realistic loans to potential home buyers once more.
Barclays bank has now responded by saying that it intends to increase its overall loan book by 6 per cent this year, based on its outstanding loan balances at the end of last year, which equates to an additional £11 billion in new lending over the course of this year.
Barclays has said that the new loans will be split between secured loans for homeowners, new home buyer loans and business loans, predominantly to small and medium sized businesses who may be struggling through the current recession.
A spokesman for Barclays said “At a time when customers are seeking to cope with the economic downturn and government and supervisors are dealing with the effects of the financial crisis, we want to do our part in getting credit to customers. Activity by households and businesses will help restore sustainable growth to the UK economy. This is a good time to lend, in circumstances where the commercial and risk terms make sense to our customers and shareholders.”
At the same time, the nationalised lender Northern Rock has announced that it has an additional £4.45 billion available as homeowner loans over the course of this year. Northern Rock announced at the end of last year that it intended to offer £5 billion worth of new loans to its customers. So far it has only lent £550 million and has restructured its homeowner loan product range to make it more attractive to borrowers.
In the meantime the lender has managed to repay another £1 billion of its loan to the government and the finances for Northern Rock seem to be now moving in the right direction.
