ROOF Blog

Gross mortgage lending totalled an estimated £12.5 billion in September, a 2 per cent rise from the £12.3 billion in August but down 27 per cent from September 2008, according to new data from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML). Behind the modest improvement from August to September and the relative stability of recent months is the balance between the types of lending taking place - there has been a pick-up in house purchase activity, but this is off-set by the decline in remortgaging. Paul Samter, CML economist observed: ‘House buying activity is running at considerably higher levels than around the turn of the year. However, it remains weak on any historic comparison and is unlikely to rise much further given the constraints the lending community faces and a still difficult economic backdrop.’

The City watchdog’s proposals for the mortgage market received a cautious welcome from the industry today. But trade bodies expressed concerns about how some of the Financial Services Authority’s (FSA) measures would be implemented, as well as the impact a ban on self-certification mortgages would have on certain borrowers. Paul Broadhead, head of mortgage policy at the Building Societies Association, said: ‘We need a sensible balance between appropriate regulation and allowing people to buy their own home when they can afford to do so.’ The Council of Mortgage Lenders said the FSA seemed to believe that regulation could not rely on borrowers behaving in their own interests, but that consumers instead needed measures to be introduced to protect them from themselves. However, Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity, called on the FSA to implement the changes it was proposing urgently to ensure the ‘dark days of reckless lending never return.’