Remortgage demand in November continued the trend of declining during a time period when there were threats of an early interest rate hike by the Bank of England in 2015. The cause of homeowners to sit and wait out the threats rather than grab a new deal has been perplexing. The warnings situation was luckily defused for those that could have found themselves in a bad financial situation without a remortgage. When the global economy weakened it caused the forecasts of a possible rate increase to diminish. The latest Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee minutes revealed that the two members that had been voting to raise the rate pulled back and voted with the others in the first meeting of the year to keep the standard base rate at 0.5%.

Now forecasts have pushed the rate change to further back this year and not likely to occur until long after summer.

November had around 24,000 remortgage loans advanced which was down from the 28,000 advanced in November 2013. This marks the seventh consecutive annual fall recorded. Remortgage loan values declined as well from £4.1bn in November 2013 to £3.6bn a year later, which is a decline of 14%.

Demand for home purchases declined sharply in November which resulted in a 12% dip from November 2012 as well as a 12% monthly fall. There were 55,600 purchase mortgages while the volume fell to £9.2bn.

CML director general Paul Smee remarked, “The easing-back of activity is not unexpected as there is usually a seasonal lending dip in the winter and the major industry changes and more restrained market sentiment have inevitably caused month-to-month fluctuations over the past 12 months.”

Meanwhile, the competitive environment between lenders for the attention of borrowers remains. This is keeping the cheap remortgage deals launched in recent weeks still on the table for those seeking to get a low interest rate now.