Housing market in the doldrums as owner occupier borrowing falls

Home-owners borrowed £8.1 billion for house purchases in April, which was four per cent down on the same month a year ago.

There were 47,300 loans taken out to buy homes - that’s down five per cent on April 2015. 

The data comes from the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

Both of these measures were much more sharply down on March this year - when the mortgage lending figures were temporarily inflated by the surge of buying to beat the additional homes stamp duty surcharge deadline.

Even though the typical loan size for owner occupiers and investment buyers combined decreased to £129,950 from £133,000 in April, this was offset by the household income of borrowers also decreasing slightly from £40,600 in March to £39,700 in April, which meant the income multiple stayed the same at 3.46.

Owner occupier loans showed a similar trend with the average amount borrowed decreasing to £163,000 from £180,000 in March, and the average household income of a home mover also decreasing from £58,400 to £52,500, causing the income multiple to go up from 3.21 to 3.26 month-on-month.

Remortgage lending was the only lending type to show both month-on-month and year-on-year increases in April. April saw the highest volume of loans for remortgage in a month since July 2009, and the highest lending value for remortgage since January 2009.