Mortgage activity gains strength in July

[DimPrawn]

Cliche. How and where is it overvalued?

Surrey and Portugal for a start.

[sasguru]

Not much use when property is over valued.

Cliche. How and where is it overvalued?

[administrator]

Not much use when property is over valued.

But will they be overvalued if the BoE keeps on injecting cash into the economy? It looks to me like the price of everything else is rising to meet the cost of housing. Despite what some of the forums like House Price Crash say I can see wage inflation in the market. A friend of mine told me he is on £31K a year as a web designer, he isn't overly technical and works from home too - when I first started work in the same line it was more like £20-£24K...

[alreadypacked]

Not much use when property is over valued.

[Martin@AS Financial]

I believe that this is as a result of lenders offering some historically low interest rates towards the end of July which has prompted a surge of remortgages as suddenly sitting on a lenders svr is not as attractive as the certainty of a 5 year fixed at 2.95%. It will be interesting to see August's figures when they are released as this is traditionally a quieter time of the year. However, with rates as low as they are, I would expect July's figures to be built on.

(Taken from Mortgage Strategy)

Mortgage activity was strong in July, boosted by an increasingly competitive marketplace according to the latest National Mortgage Index from the Mortgage Advice Bureau.

Application activity rose by 14.6 per cent on June for both purchases and remortgages, according to data compiled from more than 500 brokers and 800 estate agents.
MAB credits the latest round of quantitate easing, coupled with the early stages of the funding for lending scheme, in driving a more competitive marketplace. The average loan-to-value on purchase applications rose to 70.4 per cent in July, up from 68.2 per cent in June. These latest figures signal an end to six consecutive months of declines.

The rate on the average two-year fix fell from 4.72 per cent in June to 4.68 per cent, and the average five-year fix dropped from 4.9 per cent to 4.87 per cent in July.
MAB’s head of lending Brian Murphy says: “Mortgage activity levels are still volatile from month to month, and this pattern looks set to continue for some time to come. Application levels increased
significantly last month following the washout in June, but they were still below the peak we saw in May.

“Last month saw lenders a rash of competitive products launched as lenders revised products in advance of the ‘funding for lending’ scheme. We hope this will stimulate more lenders to increase lending targets and launch more competitive products in the coming months.”