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A manifesto for better mortgages - Times

Banks and building societies have been accused of hampering the recovery by taking an “excessively” cautious approach to lending — particularly for homeowners who are remortgaging.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders, the industry body, said last week that the market was on “two-speed settings”, with remortgaging declining as lending for house purchases continued to recover.

The CML said: “Remortgaging activity continued to fall away due to the extremely low interest rate environment and restrictive lending criteria for the most attractive deals. There were 32,000 remortgage loans advanced in August, a 22% decrease on July, and a 57% decrease on August last year.”