Figures just released by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) suggest that residential landlords were particularly active in March searching out good deals on cheap property insurance.
City puts a dampener on the figures
According to the organisation, mortgage lending soared compared to the previous two months of 2011. The news radiated a warm glow on the cheeks of estate agents across the UK who have been dealing with a frozen house market for over 12 months now. Financial brokers in the City were still gloomy enough to say the figures would have little effect on house prices, but others in the industry will be cheered by any glimmer of good news.
Upward trend powered by landlords and remortgages
The CML report showed that the gross lending on mortgages in March reached £11.3 billion, a whole two billion more than February’s dismal figures and helped the first quarter figures to slightly improve on those of 2010, although March in 2010 was actually better than this year.
It is thought that a great deal of the extra activity on the mortgage front was down to homeowners taking the chance to remortgage before the much vaunted threat of a interest rates hike, and importantly for letting agents, buy to let investors looking for bargains which they could cover with property insurance and quickly move in to the buoyant rental market.
Lower forecast for April
Already industry experts are predicting April will bring everyone down to earth because the two Bank holidays will put a dampener on house sales, but figures do show that more properties are coming on the market and more landlords are showing an interest in expanding their portfolios. It now only needs the residential market to get a breakthrough and the doubting Thomases in the industry may be proved wrong.
Realism needed by those with “sticking” properties
With new homes coming on to the market, at least the vendors won’t be expecting prices that were achieved three years ago, which is without doubt a major factor in why so many houses are still sticking. The concept of “giving a house away” still lingers strongly with those who first marketed their homes before the recession. Unfortunately for these people the average house price has fallen something like £20,000 over this period, to those reading this in the paper, it is a statistic, to those trying to sell their house it is often viewed as daylight robbery. They cannot bring themselves to let their property go at the new market value and so bring a certain level of distortion to the figures released every month.