Mortgage lending recovery lead by first-time buyers, says CML

Last month mortgage lending reached £18.9 billion, 6% lower than December but 2% more than last January, says the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) The CML also says last month’s total was the highest for a January since the pre-financial crash peak in 2008. The number of loans approved has also been increasing since last summer’s Brexit-induced quiet property market, and the CML now says it expect to see 71,000 mortgages approved every month, 10,000 a month more than the period following the EU Referendum. But the CML’s senior economist Mohammad Jamei says the figures mask a twin-track market. “Weakness in buy-to-let and home movers have been offset by an increase in first-time buyers and remortgage lending,” he says. The CML says this trend shouldn’t be a surprise because most government schemes have been aimed at helping boost first-time buyer numbers and that, as a result, there were 360,000 first time buyers during 2016, up 8% on 2015. “A continuing acute shortage of homes being offered for sale is one aspect of a broken housing market, that looks unlikely to resolve in the near term,” says Jamei. Jeremy Dunscombe from the Legal & General Mortgage Club, says: “The start of…