Mortgage market radiating different signals
The UK mortgage market has very much separated into a more positive traditional mortgage sector and a negative remortgage sector. The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has today confirmed that new loans were up by 29% in August, compared to the same period last year, although remortgages were down by 57% over the same period.
However, when taking both figures in context, i.e. the massive reduction in mortgage applications over the last 2 years, and the fact that more and more people are unable to remortgage their homes because of negative equity, the situation is still very difficult. There is also the problem that UK banks and UK mortgage companies have been unwilling to inject further capital into the market despite being bankrolled by the UK government and UK taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds.
This is the main reason why many people believe that the UK economy may well struggle in 2010 and we could yet see a slide back into recession. As we have seen on a number of occasions over the last two years, it is actually possible for UK consumers and UK homeowners to "talk themselves" into a recession which would be very difficult to pull away from in the short to medium term.
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