Home-ownership is the long-term tenure of choice for most Scottish adults according to findings released by the Council of Mortgage Lenders based on a survey undertaken by YouGov.
In 10 years time 78 per cent of adults in Scotland would like to be home-owners, the research found, on a par with the rest of Great Britain.
In the shorter term, 46 per cent of those surveyed would like to buy a new home in the next 2-3 years (either first home or subsequent), and 37 per cent of these think it is likely that they will be able to do so.
Separate data released by the CML shows an increase in lending to first-time buyers in Scotland in the first quarter compared to the same period last year, while home mover lending and remortgage lending was subdued.
In the first quarter of 2013, a total of 4,500 loans were advanced to first-time buyers in Scotland. This represented a 10 per cent increase on the first quarter of 2012 (4,100 loans) but there was a seasonal fall compared to the fourth quarter of 2012 (5,300 loans).
Distortions caused by the end of the stamp duty holiday in March last year were less pronounced in Scotland than in the UK overall. Lower house prices there, on average, meant that a larger proportion (typically around 60 per cent compared to 40 per cent in the UK) of first-time buyers in Scotland buy properties valued at less than £125,000 – below the stamp duty threshold.
With lower house prices, first-time buyers in Scotland continued to borrow less relative to their income and spend a smaller proportion of their income on mortgage payments than in the UK. First-time buyers in Scotland typically borrowed 2.81 times their income and spent 17 per cent of their income on mortgage payments, lower than the 3.23 times borrowed by first-time buyers in the UK who spent 19.5 per cent of their income on mortgage payments.
As in the UK overall, first-time buyers typically borrowed 80 per cent of their property’s value.
While there was a year-on-year increase in lending to first-time buyers in Scotland, there was a fall in lending to home movers.
Iain Malloch, chair of CML Scotland, commented: “With most adults in Scotland still viewing home-ownership as their tenure of choice and with more high loan-to-value mortgages now available, conditions for borrowers looking to either buy or move home are continuing to improve.
“The announcement of a new-build shared equity scheme, the continuation of MI New Home and the launch of the Help to Buy scheme next year, should provide a further boost to the Scottish mortgage market.”
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