Wandsworth

Wandsworth and Wimbledon top borrowing league table




Wandsworth (£472m) and Wimbledon (£408m) have topped a new mortgage lending table which has revealed that £17bn was borrowed by Londoners last year, according to Lendy.

Research by the peer-to-peer secured lending platform found that south London had more new mortgage lending (£8bn) than the whole of Wales (£6.8bn) and was at the same level as Scotland (£8.2bn). 

The data revealed that 17 of the top 20 areas for new mortgage lending last year were in London.

The highest non-London area for new mortgages was Maidenhead, Berkshire, (£301m) which came 11th out of the 2,717 postcode areas in the study.

Wimbledon experienced more new lending last year than the whole of Newcastle (£400m) and twice as much as Sunderland (£199m).

Wandsworth and Wimbledon combined (£880m) surpassed the level of new mortgage lending in Cornwall (£823m).

The £17bn in new mortgages in London in 2016 was 13% of the total £131bn in new lending across the UK residential property market last year. 

However, the rising property prices means that buyers are finding it more difficult than ever before to buy in the popular areas of London. 

Lendy added that the banks’ focus on increasing their books of owner-occupier mortgage lending may be to the detriment of new housebuilding. 

Outstanding lending to property developers are still close to an all-time low with the lack of finance for developers being one of the main barriers to the government’s housebuilding targets.  

Liam Brooke, co-founder of Lendy, said: “Lenders have continued to pile into the owner-occupier market, and south London is still their favourite place to lend.

“House prices in areas like Wimbledon and Wandsworth have continued to climb sharply, even [after] Brexit.

“Lenders view them as a safe bet, and continue to commit billions of pounds in new lending to them.

“The downside of that is that lending to developers to build new homes is still as low as it has ever been, and the housing gap remains one of the biggest problems the country faces.”

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