Housing market falls in January
January has not been a good month for many people looking to purchase a house as recent figures released by the British Bankers Association (BBA). The BBA's figures suggest that lending was 17.5% lower than that a year ago. In January the gross mortgage lending figure stood at £8 billion a drop of £2.9 billion from the previous month. This comes as a shock to some as December saw a steep rise in the amount of lending, although experts did suggest that the figures might drop as stamp duty relief ended in 2010.
One reason that may be at fault for the drop in the number of mortgages could be the adverse weather the UK saw in January. With such a steep fall other factors must also be looked at as the number of properties sold in January fell by more than 10,000 compared to December.
While the figure dropped in January the banks annual growth rate in mortgage lending of 4.8% is a vast improvement on Decembers growth of 0.9% throughout the market.
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February 25th 2010