Analyst moneysupermarket.com says that there has been a 13 per cent increase in the number of mortgage products since August. That month saw a low point of mortgage products, down by 40 per cent from January, with numbers falling from 3,384 to 2,182 in the eight months.
The December total of mortgage products was 2,430 ? still 27 per cent lower than January, but a distinct recovery since August, reported fairinvestment.co.uk.
Although evidently a bit of relaxation has come to the mortgage market, it is a long way short of summer 2007 ? before the credit crunch ? and the time of 125 per cent mortgages. They have disappeared and the number of 95 per cent Loan-to-Value (LTV) mortgages has fallen by three-quarters in 2009.
Mortgages asking for 15 per cent deposits, however, have seen a pick-up in 2009, with 85 per cent loans growing by a third in the year and seeing the most significant increase of all mortgages.
Mortgage manager at moneysupermarket.com, Hannah-Mercedes Skenfield, said that ?we could be on the long road to recovery? after four months in a row of growth in the mortgage market.
It is still difficult for first-time buyers to get on the property ladder, as the best mortgage deals are available to those with the largest deposits.
Ms Skenfield said that the rise in 85 per cent LTV products was encouraging. ?For many consumers the real difficulty in getting on the property ladder is in scraping together a deposit. Because of the financial crisis lenders became obsessed with equity to the point where affordability became a secondary consideration,? she said.
With the recent rise in deals, Ms Skenfield felt that the obsession with equity might be dying out a little.
