Mortgage landscape 'reshaped' in 2008

Remortgaging firms in Northern Ireland and others across the UK have seen a sharp decline in mortgage lending activity in the past year, which has reshaped the mortgage landscape.

This has been expressed by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), which has published a report showing that there was a 49 per cent decline from 2007 in house purchase loans.

Last year registered the lowest level of activity since 1974 as only 516,000 house purchase loans were approved.

According to Michael Coogan, CML director general, this low level of mortgage approvals and transactions "is insufficient for the functioning of an efficient market".

"Measures are now in place to seek to restore the flow of funding to the mortgage market, but this will take time to feed through," he stated.

He went on to say that more still needed to be done to boost the level of transactions, stabilise prices and restore confidence, solicitors in Belfast may want to take note.

Banks, building societies and other lenders sharing some 11.7 million mortgages in the UK are represented by the CML.
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