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Credit crunch to keep mortgage costs up for two years
08/05/2008 13:32:00
The effects of the credit crunch are expected to keep mortgage payments high for the next two years, one financial expert has claimed.
According to Iain Cornish, chairman of the Building Society Association (BSA), the credit crunch has led to the tightening of lenders' belts with many products being withdrawn from the market to protect them from high-risk buyers.
Mortgage provider Abbey withdrew the last 100 per cent mortgage product from the market last week.
Speaking to the Times, Mr Cornish said: "There is clearly no going back."
"In my view, it is hard to see global and domestic markets recovering in anything less than a two-year timescale, and when they do, how they operate will be very different to how they were in the first part of the decade," he told the newspaper.
Recent figures from the Bank of England revealed that levels of mortgage lending has fallen to an all time low, having dropped by 44 per cent on the previous year during March.
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