New mortgages up by 25 per cent
A Staffordshire estate agency is gearing up for a burst of summer activity in the housing market after the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) revealed a 25% surge in the number of new mortgage advances during March.
Heywoods Property, which serves the Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stoke-on-Trent area, hailed the increase as just the catalyst needed to invigorate a subdued housing market and get property sales moving again.
The company said that restrictive lending conditions were the main reason for the recent period of slow turnover in the housing market and that the CML figures suggested that more people were finally getting access to mortgage credit.
The number of mortgages granted during March came to 45,000, compared with just 36,000 in February, representing a 45% year-on-year increase since March 2009.
The figures are particularly encouraging for people looking to buy their first home, with the number of advances for first-time buyers increasing by 27%, compared with a rise of 24% for existing homeowners.
Heywoods added that the latest figures were by no means conclusive evidence that the market was back on the up. However, given the combination of a traditional summer upsurge in transactions and the added momentum of more mortgage approvals, the company expects to see the upward trend continue in the coming months.