Lending for mortgages less 'frenetic' than 2013

May 29, 2014 by Brendan

News

The rate of lending for mortgages is not as fast-paced as it was towards the end of 2013, according to the trade body for the residential mortgage lending industry.

Publishing its first-quarterly results of the year, the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) explained that when compared against the latter part of last year, home mortgage lending at present is not quite as “frenetic”.

Though mortgage advisors and lenders are not seeing as much business, the CML announced that there was a 4% increase on new home loans from February to March.

This was considerably down from Q4 2013, however. The Council said that mortgage lending had fallen by 16% from the last three months of last year to the first three months of 2014.

The results come as the Mortgage https://www.beaconfinancialtraining.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/cemap-online-and-classroom-training-uk.jpget Review (MMR) has been introduced. However, the industry body said that it was too early to clearly see whether the tighter criteria demanded by the MMR was the significant factor in the downturn.

The director general of the CML, Paul Smee, commented:

“We do not anticipate prolonged disruption to the market as a consequence.

“But we still see affordability constraints as an important factor in determining the level of demand for mortgages which we see over the next year.”

The MMR obliges mortgage lenders to check applicant details more thoroughly to ascertain whether borrowers can afford to repay the loan.

It was officially introduced at the end of last month (April), though a significant number of lenders had introduced the tighter checks demanded much earlier.