There were 14,200 loans for house purchase in Scotland during the fourth quarter of 2009, the Council of Mortgage Lenders has reported.
These were worth £1.6 billion, up 4% by number and 5% by value from the preceding three months. Growth in the Scottish market was a little slower than in the UK as a whole, which saw a 9% increase in house purchase activity in the fourth quarter and a 62% increase year on year.
The rise in Scotland from the last three months of 2008 was 22% by volume and 19% by value, up from its low of 7,600 loans (worth £785 million) in the first quarter. Earlier in 2008, however, the market had been much stronger so the 47,000 house purchase loans advanced over 2009 as a whole was 23% down on 2008 and the fewest in the 16 years the CML has been producing this data.
As a result of the slower upturn, Scotland’s share of all house purchase loans fell to 8% in the quarter, the lowest share in nearly three years. The 9% share for 2009 as a whole was down from a high of 12% in 2008.
The number of first-time buyers in Scotland was unchanged at 5,400 in the fourth quarter. But the value of lending to first-time buyers increased in the last three months from £474 million to £479 million, and the number of loans was up from 4,100 (worth £368 million) year-on-year.
Home movers saw a rise in activity from 8,400 loans (worth £1 billion) in the third quarter to 8,800 (worth £1.1 billion) in quarter four. Neither home movers nor first-time buyers saw much change in size of deposits or income multiples but mortgage interest payments as a proportion of income, one of many ways to assess affordability, fell significantly, particularly for the latter group – from 14.2% of income in the third quarter to 13% in quarter four. This is the lowest level since 2004.
In line with the rest of the UK, remortgaging volumes remain low in Scotland. There were 9,000 remortgage loans (worth £900 million) in the fourth quarter – down from 10,000 (worth £1 billion) in the preceding three months and from 16,000 (worth £1.6 billion) in the last three months of 2008. For the whole of 2009, there were 39,000 loans (worth £4.4 billion) for remortgage, down from 74,000 (worth £7.4 billion) in 2008.
CML Scotland policy consultant Kennedy Foster said: “We do not anticipate an increase in lending activity immediately. Funding conditions remain challenging
