Obtaining a mortgage or remortgage has just become even more difficult, reversing a trend of several months of improvement. The survey providing the data is courtesy of e.surv, one of the UK’s predominant surveyors. The results shed light on the Bank of England’s new cautious lending program.

A credible indicator of how accessible mortgage loans are for any time in history, is the LTV rations which are present with lenders. The average Loan To Value dropped to almost 57 per cent in September. This is down from a two year high of 58.1 per cent in August. This drop is in the wake of a long period of steady improvement in this area of the housing sector.

Unfortunately, there is some bias regarding the tightening criteria. The squeeze on lending is targeting those who are buying lower valued property. Those seeking more expensive homes have seen little to no change in their accessibility to mortgage funding.

Richard Sexton, business development director of e.surv, commented on the big picture of the tight lending criteria, saying: "Tighter loan to value criteria have hurt everybody, but those at the bottom of the ladder have been hit disproportionately. One in five borrowers wants to buy a home worth less than £125,000. They are the classic first time buyers, but they are still trailing far behind wealthier home buyers in their access to finance. Those financing homes in the £500,000 price bracket are only around one twentieth of buyers. For them, it’s as if the credit crunch hardly happened. This is a concern as FTB (first time buyer) participation is central to any sustained recovery in house prices."