© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
Lending to borrowers with deposits worth 15% or less of their property’s value showed a 5% month-on-month increase in December. There were 8,370 loan approvals made for higher LTV borrowers (typically first-time buyers), representing a 0.9% year-on-year improvement compared to 8,294 in December 2013.
As a proportion of total home purchase approvals, the number of borrowers in the higher LTV bracket has risen slightly month-on-month to 13.59% from November (13.5%). Despite this, they still have not returned to the highs of Q3 2014 when they occupied 17.6% of the market on average.
The most recent Your Move and Reeds Rains First Time Buyer Tracker found that the average first-time buyer’s deposit in November had fallen 4% year-on-year to just £25,991 from £27,173 in November 2013. This drove a November sales surge in sales to first-time buyers. An increase in higher LTV lending in December suggests that this trend may have continued.
At the other end of the market, borrowers with deposits worth 40% or more of their property’s value fell back in December. Just 17,824 such loans were made, a 3.5% decrease from November (18,476) and a 16.6% reduction from 21,381 in December 2013.