Council Of Mortgage Lenders - Housing and mortgage market forecasts 2008.

The original document can be retrieved from: http://www.cml.org.uk/cml/publications/forecast

We’ve uploaded it here for your convenience.

CML Housing and mortgage market forecasts 2008.
http://ukpropertyladder.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/1forecastdocumentfinal05081.pdf

Our comments:

The CML is suggesting that “The worst of the credit crunch may now be over“.   But this is contradiction of various reports that Property Investors are receiving. Please bear in mind that this report was published in May 2008 about a month before the blog was posted. It was on Wedesnesday night 19/06/2008, in his annual Mansion House speech that Mervin King the governor of the Bank of England warned that the UK faces a few tough years ahead.

Mervyn King said that Britain is facing its ‘most difficult economic challenge for two decades’, due to falling growth and the steeply rising cost of living. In some cases, household finances will be stretched to the limit, due to modest pay rises being gobbled up by soaring food and energy bills.

Out of all these uncertainties we can state three certainties:

1. Overall house prices are going down generally in UK. According to the CML, there should be about a 7% reduction on average house prices between 2007 and 2008.
2. Mortgage lenders have all tightened up their lending criteria. Getting a new mortgage for first time buyers is proven more difficult and those remortgaging are have aslo difficulties if they don’t have a lot of equities in their house.
3. Now is a very good time to be opened up to more creative ways of buying properties in UK. We believe that rent to buy or lease options gives much more flexibility to sellers and landlords. All that needs to be done is to understand the conveyancing process and find solicitors who are familiar with it.