From This is Money:
Mortgages for home purchases dived by 49% in 2008, to just 516,000, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. This was the smallest number since 1974 and represented a third less than the 723,000 approved in 1991 ? the lowest level of the 1990s slump.
The number of people buying their first home fell to its lowest ever level since records began in 1974, with just 194,000 climbing on to the property ladder.
New buyers fared even worse last year than in the 1990s, with 42% less buying their first home than when mortgages for new buyers reached a low of 336,200 in 1991.
Andrew Montlake, of independent mortgage broker Cobalt Capital, said: ‘The CML data crystallizes what we already knew, namely that from a mortgage perspective, 2008 was a massacre.
‘There’s nothing much to say other than that the entire market is barely recognisable from what it was two years ago.’
The property market was hammered by the mortgage freeze in 2008, with lenders struggling to secure funds and raisi…
Leave a Reply