First-time Buyers
Number of mortgages halved in last six months
Trigold has revealed that the gap in product availability is far wider than previously reported with 23,000 mortgage products wiped from the broker market in the last six months.
In August 2007 there were 45,590 products on the product search engine used by brokers and in February 2008 this had fallen to 21,988, equating to a drop of 52% in just six months.
Trigold’s marketing and business development director David Aylmer stresses that although the drop in product numbers was significant it was just a part of the story.
He said: “These figures demonstrate the extent of the credit crunch on mortgage availability although it’s important to put this into context. Tightened underwriting criteria from those lenders who still have lending capacity will continue to have a significant impact on the extent of product choice available in the market and through intermediaries.
“However, over recent years we have witnessed a considerable increase in both the number of mortgage product providers and the products they made available. Mortgage products in the UK intermediary market are still in excess of 2004 figures in the run up to mortgage regulation of 16,000.
“There is no doubt that mortgage intermediaries are finding products choices limited in some sectors such as sub-prime, but our evidence shows that intermediary activity remains strong.”