Mortgage Lending Still Low

The UK mortgage market continued its summer slide with a fall in the number of new home loans approved by High Street banks. There were 33,698 mortgages approved for house purchases in July, down by 877 from June according to the British Bankers' Association (BBA). This was the second monthly fall in a row, and compared with the high of 45,415 home loan approvals in December.

"Gross mortgage lending remains stable, although demand for mortgages continues to be subdued. The greater availability of properties for sale and slowing house price growth have not yet fed through to increased house purchase approvals," said BBA statistics director David Dooks.
 
Since a pick-up in the housing market at the end of 2009, brought about by buyers getting in ahead of the end of the stamp duty holiday, the housing market has stabilised.

Background

In January 2010 I found the perfect house. The owner was about to rent it out but said we could buy it but only if we could complete within 6 weeks. The only way we could possibly do that was to rent out our own house and get a buy to let mortgage to buy the new house. We therefore became reluctant landlords at the mercy of the UK housing market.

Our finances were severely stretched. We had to borrow a few thousand pounds from my mum and we had to borrow another few thousand from our credit cards. We started life in our wonderful new home with £9000 worth of debt and two mortgages totalling £322,000 but owning 2 houses with a combined value of around £426,000.

With the rent from our old house and the low mortgage rate on the new house we could pay off our immediate debt within a few years and live comfortably as long as interest rates didn't go up too quick and the value of houses didn't fall dramatically.