Another report confirming the continued strong demand for remortgage lending was released by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML). According to their report during the month of July the number of remortgages year on year amounted to a 26% increase. There were a total of 31,000 and the value increased by 34.2% year on year at £5.1 billion.

New house purchases in July increased by 4.8% at a volume of 67,800 up from the previous month’s 64,700 mortgages. Year on year lending for house purchases by value increased by 8.9% at £12.2 billion.

There also continues to be strong demand in the buy to let lending market which was up in volume by 39.2% for July to 25,200. The value increase was up 52% annually to £3.8 billion.

Paul Smee, director general at CML, said, “The market has shown steady growth in house purchase and buy-to-let over the past few months with general improvements in economic factors across the UK allowing for more people to enter the property market.

“This positive direction of travel going into the autumn months reinforces our recent revised forecasts that lending levels should continue to grow gradually over the rest of the year after a subdued beginning of the year.”

Remortgage lending demand is expected to remain strong throughout the end of the year as homeowners seek to take advantage of the attractive deals available before interest rates begin to rise. There are warnings that lenders might be pulling their cheapest rates due to an increase in the cost of funding for lending and then there is the chance that the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) could make a change to the standard base interest rate for the first time since March 2009.