Mortgage market hopes dashed

Hopes of a revival in mortgage lending are unrealistic, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML). New figures on mortgage lending for January show that lending fell by 8 per cent from December 2008, a 52 per cent decline in year-on-year figures. CML said that the mortgage market remained ‘very weak’ as home loans remain hard to obtain. It has also forecast a 200 per cent rise in homeowners falling into mortgage arrears this year, taking the figure to more than half a million homeowners.