On an unadjusted basis, in November:
- Home-owners borrowed £11bn for house purchase, up 5%
month-on-month and 2% year-on-year. They took out 60,800 loans,
up 5% on October and up 0.2% on November 2015.
- First-time buyers borrowed £4.7bn, up 4% on October and 9% on
November last year. This equated to 30,100 loans, up 5%
month-on-month and 8% year-on-year.
- Home movers borrowed £6.3bn, up 7% on a month ago but down 5%
compared to a year ago. This represented 30,700 loans, up 6%
month-on-month but down 6% on November 2015.
- Remortgage activity totalled £5.8bn, down 5% on October but
up 14% compared to a year ago. This came to 34,700 loans,
unchanged month-on-month but up 13% compared to a year ago.
- Landlords borrowed £3.2bn, up 10% month-on-month but down 9%
year-on-year. This came to 21,000 loans in total, up 13% compared
to October but down 10% compared to November 2015.
The CML now publishes seasonally adjusted monthly data
(see attached), alongside the normal unadjusted data. This
makes it easier to spot underlying trends.
Paul Smee, director general of the CML,
commented:
“November lending reflected stable market conditions.
Overall, 2016 did not match recent years in terms of house
purchase lending growth, but lending remained resilient through
regulatory and political change and aspirations for
home-ownership remain strong in the UK. Our forecasts for 2017
may be less bullish than a year ago, as economic uncertainty
weighs on the market, but we still predict 1.2m transactions and
a slight increase in gross lending to £248bn.
“Buy-to-let lending, driven by remortgage activity, saw its
strongest monthly lending level since the stamp duty changes on
second properties introduced last April. Despite this, we expect
buy-to-let lending levels in both 2016 and 2017 to prove lower
than their 2015 recent peak as further tax changes take effect.”
Home-owner house purchase lending
The proportion of household income used to service capital and
interest rates reached another historic low this month for both
first-time buyers and home movers at 17.5%.
Affordability metrics for first-time buyers saw the typical loan
size increase from £133,400 in October to £134,200 in
November. The average household income remained unchanged
month-on-month at £40,000. This meant the income multiple went
from 3.56 to 3.54.
The average amount borrowed by home movers in the UK decreased to
£171,000 in November from £172,000 in October, while the average
home mover household income decreased slightly to £54,800 from
£54,900. The income multiple for the average home mover went from
3.26 to 3.27.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, in contrast to the non-seasonally
adjusted figures, the number of loans to first-time buyers
declined month-on-month, but still increased year-on-year. The
volume of home mover loans in November declined both
month-on-month and year-on-year on a seasonally adjusted basis.
Buy-to-let and remortgage activity remained relatively similar on
a seasonally adjusted and non-seasonally adjusted basis.
