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Mortgage approvals dropped to an eight-month low, to 63,793 from 63,952 the previous month, amid falling household confidence and heightened uncertainty in December, according to the Bank of England. Mortgage lending rose by £4.1bn in the same month, down from £3.6bn in November. “Weak mortgage approvals reflect the very high level of house prices, which, combined with rising interest rates, have been suppressing demand. However, the data suggests that Brexit uncertainty is increasingly weighing on lending volumes,” said Hansen Lu, economist at Capital Economics. “On the demand side, new buyer inquiries are falling, while house price expectations have dropped sharply – pointing to weakening buyer confidence”.
The Times (30/01/2019) City AM (30/01/2019)
Lloyds Banking Group is to offer 100% mortgages to first-time buyers in a return to lending last seen before the financial crash. The Lend a Hand mortgage requires a parent, grandparent or other close family member to lock away enough money to cover the equivalent of a 10% deposit. In return, they will earn a fixed 2.5% interest on this sum.
The Guardian (28/01/2019)
Transactions in the central London housing market have dropped to their lowest in a decade, as political uncertainty around Brexit begins to bite.
Financial Times (28/01/2019)
Private developers started building 23,130 homes in London in 2018 – a decrease of 15% on the year before. The figures, part of a report released by data analysts from Molior London, show the lowest level of new builds starting since 2013. “London has never recently been further away from building the number of homes it needs,” the report said.
Evening Standard (22.01/2019)
First-time buyers are now dominating Britain's housing market, as the level of current homeowners moving house fell the most in seven years, according to Lloyds Bank. It found that the number of homemovers fell by 4% last year from 2017, while the number of first-time buyers increased by 3%. It is the first year since 1995 that people buying their first home account for more of the market than homemovers – 51% vs 49% – Lloyds said. The cost of moving home is putting pressure on homemovers, said Andrew Mason of Lloyds Bank, with an average deposit now at just below £100,000, while stamp duty cuts and the Help to Buy scheme are helping out new buyers. According to the data, Northern Ireland and the north of England are the only regions where the number of homemovers increased during the last 12 months, by 7% and 1% respectively.
The Daily Telegraph (18/01/2019)
Soaring house prices have led to a boost in older people's wealth at the expense of the young, a top Bank of England official has claimed. The Bank's deputy governor Ben Broadbent said downsizing older people charge huge sums for properties thanks to the price surge, which in turn has led first-time buyers and those with growing families to take out vast mortgages. “This is the inevitable result of the boom in house prices in the early years in the last decade,” commented Mr Broadbent. He went on to warn that a significant increase in high-risk lending to businesses has worrying parallels with the sub-prime mortgage disaster that led to the financial crisis.
Daily Mail (23/01/2019)