Product comparison site Moneysupermarket.com says that, while borrowers could choose from 30,107 mortgages last August, now there are just 7,121. The Observer.
The knock-on effect, says Yolande Barnes, director of research at Savills, is a slump in the number of people buying new homes. Numbers buying and taking out house purchase loans (as opposed to remortgages) always falls in the post-Christmas period. But while borrowers took out 73,000 house purchase loans in February last year, this year the number fell to 49,000. Savills expects UK sales to fall by up to 30% this year.
