It has been a splendid year so far for sports fans. Andy Murray has won Wimbledon, Chris Froome is taking the Tour de France by storm and cricketers Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen are firing on all cylinders in the Ashes series.
The year is also turning out extremely well indeed for mortgage brokers throughout England, Scotland and Wales if not quite so well for lenders with a branch field force.
Figures from The Council of Mortgage Lenders revealed that May saw the highest level of mortgage lending since October 2008 with a total of £14.7bn given to borrowers.
The figure is up 21 per cent from the £12.2bn lent in April.
The growth in lending is expected to continue for the next few months as high volumes of applications work through the system.
CML figures also indicate that the gross mortgage market in 2013 will increase by 10 per cent on the 2012 total lending figure to £158bn, not a bad target from where the market is now.
Assuming that the increase has come from the growing broker market, there will be some brokerages seeing a 20 per cent increase in lending year-to-date.
Remortgage, buy-to-let and new homes lending, which has been bolstered by the Government’s Help to Buy scheme, has risen significantly with brokers dominating these markets.
Industry figures show that housing transactions in the first half of 2013 were not significantly ahead of 2012.
However, it should be noted that the stamp duty holiday came to an end in spring 2012, contributing to a significant increase people moving home during the first quarter last year.
As remortgage lending continues to grow and brokers take a larger share of that market, some lenders may struggle to post any growth.
Based on this, some industry experts are of the view that broker volumes will increase 10-20 per cent in 2013 and overall bank branch volumes will fall.
The Mortgage Market Review and the issue of surveyor capacity could impact how much the mortgage market grows in 2014.
The shortage in surveying resources could slow turnaround times from application to completion next year.
The issue will either push the time-to-offer metrics out or, more likely, cause lenders to rethink the order in which they instruct surveys as part of their process to allow it to run concurrently with the increased MMR documentation.
This could change the way lenders charge mortgages fees to protect margins, particularly where free valuations are in the proposition.
Surveyor resource is an issue for the industry as a whole and all surveying firms need to look at expanding their workforce to meet current demand which is predicted to increase even further.
At Countrywide, we have proactively been taking steps to address the issue by continuing to increase recruitment into key areas of our surveying business through recruitment drives, training schemes and our successful graduate surveying programme, which saw us double our graduate intake in 2013.
Despite these issues, lenders are more confident about the economic and housing market conditions, and the extension of Help-to-Buy will provide impetus to an already growing gross mortgage market.
The Funding for Lending Scheme is having a positive impact on the level of lending with better mortgage availability and the range of higher loan to value products on the market is getting much better. At Countrywide, we are currently offering a variety of higher LTV products to our customers.
The Halifax stamp duty paid product worked extremely well for brokers and it would be good to see this product return in the autumn.
The Barclays springboard product, which acknowledges the use of Bank of Mum and Dad, has also been well received by brokers and first-time buyers.
Increased competition in the remortgage space has led to the introduction of some very good products with the Santander for Intermediaries lifetime product a strong addition to the roster.
Figures for specialist second charge and secured mortgages look strong from what I have read and this is perhaps evidence that the high net worth mortgage and remortgage sector is also growing.
The most interesting part of the high net worth market at the moment is the return of the standard lenders, such as Santander, Nationwide and Halifax which are all servicing this market space. It is a return to a more rational and sensible market, which is good for the mortgage market as a whole.
