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Tag: Council of Mortgage Lenders

Homes sales continued to perk up in April, but it’s too early to call it a recovery

Homes sales continued to perk up in April, but it’s too early to call it a recovery

The official figures for property transactions will make comforting reading in April for those selling homes. They seem consistent with the prevailing view that the housing market, in terms of sales and not prices, is showing some signs of bouncing back up from the floor reached at the turn of the year. The latest stats show that in both March and April there were 58,000 deals. This compares with 41,000 in January and 43,000 in February.

If 2008 was bad for the housing market, 2009 looks much worse

If 2008 was bad for the housing market, 2009 looks much worse

There are plenty of scary figures in the latest forecast from the Council of Mortgage Lenders not least the expectation that half a million homeowners will fall into arrears. The expectation that 75,000 homes will be repossessed by mortgage lenders is pretty scary too, especially as this in practice would mean more repossessions than in previous peak of 1991 when all repossessions are totalled up. But for me the most disturbing prediction within the forecast is that residential property transaction…

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Thousands of homebuyers in negative equity

Thousands of homebuyers in negative equity

Figures provided to the BBC by the Council of Mortgage Lenders show that 23,000 homebuyers took out 100% mortgages in the 12 months to March this year. With house prices as measured by HBOS (Halifax) back to the level of January last year, this means that many if not most of those who took out 100% mortgages since then will now be in negative equity.