The good news for homebuyers looking for the best home mortgage is that lending rose slightly in October, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML).

Total lending rose 7% up from the previous month, to £18.7bn. However, last month’s lending was still 44% lower than in October last year, just before the credit crunch triggered the current mortgage drought.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said that despite the Bank of England’s cuts in interest rates, lending would remain weak in the next few months and 2008 may be the year which saw the biggest slump in home sales and prices on record.

Some experts have suggested that the fall in mortgage lending may now have reached a trough.

This week the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) pointed out that its own surveys had shown a recent increase in enquiries from potential new homebuyers, a good indicator of future trends in home sales.

Even if mortgage lending and home sales stabilise at current levels, many experts are forecasting that prices will continue to fall, with some suggesting that they could go down by a further 15-20% in 2009 after a likely drop of around 15% this year.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 at 9:57 am and is filed under Mortgage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.