UK home buyers will find it difficult to procure a mortgage this year and might have to wait until 2014 before it becomes easier to obtain a home loan, according to market research company Datamonitor.
It revealed that while the mortgage market is unlikely to fall further, gross mortgage lending is expected to experience a marginal growth in 2011, climbing to £138 billion in 2011 from £136 billion last year.
The Datamonitor report said that while low consumer demand is deterring the mortgage market, the main factor restraining growth is the inavailability of finance.
According to the report, lenders are having difficulty raising funds because of the requirement to hold more cash in capital reserves after the 2007 Northern Rock debacle.
Datamonitor also said that consumer demand stayed low because people deferred acquiring homed in such uncertain financial conditions, while home prices were potentially volatile. Others are having difficulty raising large amounts of deposit, while low interest rates are dampening the appetite to re-apply for a housing loan.
As a result, the residential mortgage market struggles to pull through from the highs of 2007.
“It is now debatable whether this market will ever attain the heights it reached between 2005 and 2007,” said Daoud Fakhri, a Datamonitor analyst.
“The market has a long way to go, as the initial feeling in 2010 was that gross lending would grow to around £150bn, but instead it fell.”
“In total, between the height of the market in 2007 and 2010 gross lending fell by more than 60 percent. We now predict that the market won’t reach £150 billion until 2013 at the earliest, with significant growth in 2014 when we expect it to reach £170 billion.”