First-time buyers, home movers, home-owner remortgage and buy-to-let all saw a monthly decline in lending in August, according to new figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders.
According to the CML, this is a normal seasonal trend as August is typically less strong for mortgage completions. Despite this, there was an increase in mortgage lending from last year.
For home-owner loans, re-mortgaging of £4.2bn was down 18% from July, but up 20% from last year.
Loans for first time buyers were also £4.2bn, down 11% from last month, but up 5% from last year. Meanwhile, there was £7.1bn of home mover loans in made August, down 7% from last month, but up 8% from last year.
As for buy-to-let, there was a substantial increase of 37.9% in lending from August 2014, with 22,000 loans. The amount of money lent was up 47% to 3.4bn.
Buy-to-let remortgaging saw £1.9bn of activity, down 14% from July, but a huge jump of 73% from last year.
Overall, lenders granted 62,300 mortgages in August, up 1.5% from last year and a rise in value of 6.6% to 11.3bn.
Bob Pannell, chief economist of the CML, said: “Seasonal factors pushed all categories of lending lower in August compared to July. However, the mortgage market continues to see year-on-year growth, and we expect this to continue over the coming months.”
