Mortgage lending 'will rise in near future'
Monday, 20 December 2010 11:51 AM
The UK will see an increase in mortgage lending and remortgaging over the next few years, an expert has reported.
Cath Hearnden, director at MyMortgageDirect, said: "The market is never going to stagnate, there is always going to be some movement."
She added: "Inflation is going to be higher next year, they mentioned a possible rise in interest rates and already people are starting to think that they should be coming off those variable rates and starting to fix their rates."
According to research by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), recent levels of sales mean that each property in the UK's stock of 18 million privately-owned homes is only changing hands at a rate of once every 20 years.
Its findings also showed that there was likely to be a limit on the availability of credit to support mortgage lending in 2011 and beyond.
Hearnden went on to say that those with only a small deposit, the self-employed and first-time buyers were currently finding it most difficult to get on the property ladder.
Offering some reassurance, however, she added: "The market will move, I just don't think it is going to take off - [and] that is probably a good thing."
The latest CML statistics suggest that, since the global economic downturn took hold, Britain has seen a massive decline in house-buying activity.
Residential property transactions are thought to have plunged from over 1.6 million a year to an annual figure of less than 900,000.
