Lenders have to report statistics. Are you one of them?

According to the CML (Council of Mortgage Lenders), gross mortgage lending in January totalled an estimated £18.9bn.  This is an increase of 2% on January 2016, and down 6% from December.  There were 29,743 loans approved for house purchase in January, according to the British Bankers Association (BBA), with the average loan approved for house purchase rising to £182,500.

The Financial Conduct Authority reports that 69.75% of mortgage lending in Q3 2016 was for 75% or less of a property’s value.  Just 5.3% of lending was for mortgages over 90% of a property’s value!

Lenders are restricted on the amount they can lend in many different mortgage categories.  So for example, if a lender offers more than 4.5 x income, the maximum allowed across their business for the year will be a set percentage of business.  If this is, say 15% of business, once this target is hit, the lender will need to withdraw this offering (or dramatically increase other areas to bring the split of business back in line).  This is also the same with lending in loan to value bandings, so a percentage limit will be enforced on lenders offering over 90% loans to the value of the property and so on. 

The Office of National Statistics say that the average house price for first-time buyers was £184,973 in December 2016, which is an annual increase of 7%.

Whereas The Money Charity Statistics confirm that outstanding mortgage lending stood at £1.326 trillion at the end of January.  That means that the estimated average outstanding mortgage for the 11.1m households with mortgage debt was £119,752 in January.

As you can see, everything is a statistic.  With this in mind and with so many rate changes and reductions, lenders will look closely at an individual’s recent payment profile, how many recent credit searches have been incurred by financial institutions, and more.  So don’t give them any excuses not to lend to you!  The more credit searches you have on your profile, over a recent amount of time, the more likely your credit score will be lower as a result.  In short, your credit search / score are the basis on which most lenders will initially decide whether to lend to you or not.  The best rates will almost definitely go to those with the best credit scores.  If you’ve not checked your credit file before, it is well worth a review and most are now free.