Charting the recovery: a bit of context
The Council of Mortgage Lenders released their “Ten snapshots of an improving mortgage market” the other day and while there is no doubt that 2012 showed the biggest improvement in market activity since the credit crunch, I thought it would be useful to present the first two charts again with some pre-crunch data and without cutting the y-axis.
2012 saw 932,000 transactions which is a 5.5% improvement on 2011 but is still only 60% of the 2000-07 average
Meanwhile, first time buyer mortgage completions (year to Nov 2012) increased by 12% in the year driven by the end of the stamp duty holiday in March and an increase in market activity during November (my analysis on the impact of stamp duty holidays on market activity).
However this is 58% of 2003-07 completions and only 42% of average completions during the period 1993-2002 when affordability was not stretched.
