The director of e.surv chartered surveyors highlighted statistics from the firm’s Mortgage Monitor, showing only 6 per cent of all buyers in London last month accessed high LTV loans. The figure in the south east was only slightly higher at 10 per cent.
He said a palpable north-south divide was opening up as a quarter of buyers in the north east and Cumbria had a deposit worth 10 per cent or less. High LTV borrowers also made up a quarter of all buyers in the north west and Yorkshire.
However, lending to borrowers with small deposits was generally on an upward curve, with the number of high LTV loans reaching a six-year high of 11,138 last month. That figure was 74 per cent up on last January’s number, 10,645.
Ruth Whitehead, director of north London-based Ruth Whitehead Associates, said the benefits of Help to Buy were yet to be felt in her local area, where many young and disadvantaged borrowers could no longer build up a sufficient deposit due to rocketing house prices.
