Tuesday, Feb 23, 2010
Approvals 35,083, down 23% on December
BBA: January figures for the main high street banks
BBA statistics director, David Dooks, said of the latest data:
"It was no surprise to see the January mortgage figures falling back from December, when
transactions were being pushed through to beat the end of stamp duty relief. There was a natural
reaction in the January figures and the bad weather further suppressed market activity.
After the Christmas period, demand for consumer credit was weaker in January, as people shied
away, or were discouraged by the weather, from retail spending and held on to their deposits.
The total amount lent to non-financial companies of £340bn continues to contract, as demand for
finance remains subdued and trading conditions are still adversely impacting on business sentiment."
Posted by dill @ 09:52 AM (1276 views) Add Comment
11 Comments
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1. jack c said...
The FT headline (amazing)
"Snow and inflation blamed for reduced lending"
www.ftadviser.com/FTAdviser/Mortgages/Lenders/News/article/20100223/2f665960-205f-11df-b687-00144f2af8e8/Snow-and-inflation-blamed-for-reduced-lending.jsp
2. cynicalsoothsayer said...
Blame anything but unaffordable house prices.
3. timmy t said...
That's fair enough... quarter of a million for a 2 bed flat is perfectly reasonable... Not when it's snowing though... what do you think I am - stupid?
4. timmy t said...
That's fair enough... quarter of a million for a 2 bed flat is perfectly reasonable... Not when it's snowing though... what do you think I am - stupid?
5. ontheotherhand said...
They are overegging the angle that it was a rush to beat the stamp duty rise. If that were the case, then December would just 'steal' the January sales, and if you add Dec and Jan together and compare to the same last year, the effect would disappear but, "the average of December and January together of about 40,000 is still down on the recent average, possibly reflecting the adverse weather conditions in January."
6. jack c said...
Poor weather (specifically snow) = Poor retail sales, Poor house sales, Poor lending, Poor VAT receipts, Poor petrol sales etc......
The latest Labour election song (replacing D: Ream "things can only get better") is Crowded House Weather With You, featuring a guest appearance by Tony Blair on guitar www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIb6I8gtgtw
7. mark wadsworth said...
OTOH, that's good logic about December stealing January sales, but what if the last three months of 2009 stole the sales of the first three months in 2010?
8. mark wadsworth said...
@ Timmy T, the lady who wanted to sell that 2-bed for a quarter of a million pounds is now renting it out 'until the weather improves'.
9. ontheotherhand said...
MW, agreed that would be better dataset, but by then we won't be talking about Dec on this blog anymore in April! I wonder what % of overall sales are between 125K and 175K anyway and whether a subset of that representing those who chose to rush their purchase is a significant number.
Did anyone rush out in December to the shops because something costing £100 was going up to £102 in Jan? Why when most retailers just swallowed the increase? (e.g. £400 television not repriced to £408 in Argos) Similarly, I wonder whether most sellers of houses will just have to, effectively, swallow the increase by accepting offers £1,500 less?
10. mark wadsworth said...
OTOH, you are quite right, a 1% price change makes naff all difference. So your December for January shuffle is probably correct, I was just saying that they can keep using this excuse until about March.
In 2008, nearly a quarter of properties in England & Wales sold for between £125k and £75k, if that's any help to you.
11. ontheotherhand said...
MW, thanks for the link to the data. So if that quarter went entirely missing in Jan, we are talking about 12,000 sales. More likely of course is that only some portion of that 12,000 had rushed their sale. 6,000 if half of them and that is a blip compared to the 75,000 per month we were seeing in 2006.