The FSA has published its latest Mortgage Lending Data for the United Kingdom covering the period Q4 2012.

The total value of outstanding loans at the end of Q4 was £1,229bn, an increase of 0.1% on last quarter.
New advances in the quarter amounted to £39bn, a decrease of 0.5% from last quarter and some 2% lower than in Q4 last year. £152bn of new advances were made in total in 2012.

The overall average interest rate on new advances decreased from 3.89% last quarter to 3.81% in Q4. This was largely the result of a fall in the rate for fixed rate lending.

New commitments totalling £37bn were made in the quarter, 3% higher than in Q3 but 0.4% lower than in Q4 last year.

Lending for house purchase accounted for two-thirds (66%) of new advances for the second successive quarter.
The proportion of advances for remortgages rose in the quarter to 28%, though was lower than Q4 last year (32%). Commitments for house purchase fell back from 65% of the total in Q3 to 64% this time.

The proportion of new lending done at an LTV of more than 90% remained just above 2%, as it had been throughout the rest of the year.

New lending with a combination of high LTV and high income multiple was the lowest in any quarter of 2012 at 1.2%.

The proportion of loans to borrowers with an impaired credit history continued to be below 0.3%, as it was throughout 2012.

There were 35,000 new arrears cases in Q4, a fall of 3% from last quarter but some 1% higher than in Q4 last year.

The total number of accounts in arrears at the end of the quarter fell by less than 1% in Q4, from 303,200 in Q3, to 301,800. This was a reduction of 4% over the year from the 313,200 accounts in arrears at the end of 2011.

The proportion of the residential loan book that is in arrears, and hence not fully performing, decreased to 2.44%.

Arrears totalling £33m on 8,787 accounts were capitalised in Q4.

The number of new possessions in the quarter fell by 8% to 7,836. Overall, there were 34,583 cases taken in to possession in 2012.