If the latest report from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) is to be believed, then 2011 is not going to be much of a year for homeowners looking to sell their property, or indeed for prospective buyers looking to get on the housing ladder.
The CML’s final gloomy report for 2010 did nothing to cheer up homeowners, home seekers or estate agents. Although their forecast is that nothing will change too much from the stagnation of 2010, they anticipate the Government’s action in pulling the plug on support schemes such as the Support for Mortgage Interest benefit, which was introduced by the last Labour Government when the recession was at its height, will certainly tip some homeowners over the edge and into repossession.
In all they anticipate repossessions to increase by about 4,000 to a yearly figure of 40,000 and they predict mortgage owners in arrears to go from 175,000 to 180,000. This they say will be down to the cut in government support.
With banks and building societies expected to keep their strict borrowing requirements in place, the CML anticipate no more than 860,000 house purchases to go through in 2011. The figure is slightly less than 2010 and down once more to the difficulty first time buyers are having in finding a mortgage that is viable. The great disappointment though for buyers in general, is that they can see bargains in the estate agents shop window but can’t do anything about it. The CML though, have noted that they expect house prices to remain stable in 2011 partly because homeowners with property’s for sale are digging their heels in and refusing to drop their prices any more.
It does seem that unless there is a sea change in the policies of the lenders then the buoyancy of the housing market that many in the UK thought would last forever, may have disappeared for the short term future at least. It would be interesting to see just how many of the house purchases last year resulted in a quote for landlord insurance rather than household insurance as the buy-to-let market does at least seem to be holding its own.
Tags: Advice, Advice for Tenants, Home Insurance, household insurance, Mortgage Lenders, tenants