Housing picture needs a lick of paint

The CML says gross mortgage lending dropped 13% to £25bn compared to July’s figures. Lending to buy houses, rather than remortgages, dropped by a whopping 18% to £11.9bn, as the number of house loans fell 20% month-on-month to 104,000. Rightmove says the market is “static” following publication of its figures suggesting house prices remained unchanged between July to August. That is an improvement on the average price fall of 2.2% reported by the company last month. However, some segments such as flats “are down an average ofapproximately £5,000 since July (–3%), as the market sta...