New data has revealed that residential mortgage activity observed a fall in the final quarter of last year.
According to the Bank of England’s Mortgage Lenders and Administrators Return statistics, Q4 of 2017 dropped by 2.5% quarter-on-quarter. In comparison to the correspondent quarter last year, the figure is up by 10.1%.
Falling by 0.5% from the previous quarter was lending above 90% loan to value, to 3.8% This has been attributed to a growth in remortgaging.
Whilst lending above 90% LTV saw a drop, first-time buyer activity experienced a quarter on quarter uplift of 0.5%, representing 21.2% of the market.
Seeing an increase was the proportion of lending to remortgage borrowers, growing by 1.4% to 29.7%.
Lenders saw a decrease of 1.5% in the share of new loans for house purchases, falling from 65.9% to 64.5%.
