The Irish Banking Federation (IBF), in conjunction with PwC, yesterday released its quarterly statistics on lending by IBF members, who according to the IBF are estimated to comprise 95% of the mortgage market in the State.
Just 6,954 mortgages were drawn down during the quarter for a total of €1.2bn. This is down by almost 90% by volume and value since the overall peak in Q4, 2006.
Q1, 2010 was down nearly 40% from Q1, 2009 by both volume and value. However Q1,2010 was down by 30% by volume and value from Q4,2009. The pace at which new mortgage lending is plummeting is accelerating. Q1 traditionally has the lowest mortgage figures for the year and Q3 the highest. There is no significant change to the drop off in activity even if top-ups and remortgages are excluded ie mortgage transactions reflecting property transactions have also fallen by the figures shown.
Average mortgage values have fared less badly with the average mortgage in Q1, 2010 the same as Q1, 2009 and down just 1% from Q3, 2009. And indeed the fall from peak has been only 16%. The fall from peak average values is distorted by RIL and remortgages which are down 30-40% offset by movers who are only down 12%. We do not know how average Loan-to-Value %s have moved since the peak but given there are no longer 100% mortgages available and LTVs are lower, the implication is that there has been little movement in the average price of a property bought with a mortgage – that is curious given the general acceptance that property prices are generally accepted to have dropped 30-50%.
In Q1, 2010 there were draw downs on just 4,224 mortgages by First Time Buyers, Movers and Residential Investment Letting borrowers. Given that the Permanent TSB/ESRI has an estimated 20% of the mortgage market, this would imply that the recent Quarterly Permanent TSB/ESRI house price index may have relied on less than 1,000 transactions.
First Time Buyers. Given their particular significance to the property market, the following is a closer look at First Time Buyers. 2,327 mortgages with a value of €469m were drawn down by First Time Buyers during the quarter. Below are the graphs of volume of lending and average value relating to First Time Buyers back to Q1, 2005 (when the present series started).
Numbers of FTB mortgages (volume)
FTB – Average value of loans (€k). Note the LTVs are not available.
The full spreadsheed of data going back to Q1, 2005 is available from the IBF here.
NAMA Wine Lake 
[…] May 25, 2010 by namawinelake This would appear to be the attitude that most first-time buyers (FTBs) are adopting in the State today. Although the results of the periodic report by EBS and DKM Consultants, reported on in today’s Independent, shows clearly that owning a property has not been this cheap for “a generation”, the number of FTBs has plummeted according to figures on mortgages released by the Irish Banking Federation last w…. […]