London had the largest average remortgage value in October of £252,149, compared to £106,872 in Wales. London and the South West currently have the lowest remortgage LTV at 58%, compared with the highest of 67% in Yorkshire and the North West.
Regional variations in the frequency of remortgaging are reasonably small, ranging from 4.97 years in Wales to 4.34 years in the North East.
All regions have seen a decrease in the frequency of remortgaging over the last month, apart from the North East which has increased slightly (4.53 in September to 4.34 in October).
Note that a fall in the frequency of remortgaging implies a lengthening of the time between remortgages.
The average monthly household income for all new mortgages remained steady in September, according to the CML, falling by just 0.9%. September’s figure is 0.3% higher than this time last year.
At the same time, the average interest rate has continued to fall, from 3.15% in August to 3.08% in September. This mortgage rate implies that 20.3% of household income is being used to pay off the mortgage. This remains lower than the typical rate for a new purchase mortgage, which is currently 21.4%.
"While the growth in the value of remortgaging has slowed over the past month, it remains at a very high level compared with a year ago."
"Remortgage lending is up by nearly 30% compared to this time last year, and remortgage customers are releasing more than £8,000 more cash than they were in January."
"According to a recent LMS survey approximately 18% of the £21,579 average equity released last month will go into home improvements, 11% on the repayment of debt and the remaining 71% will finance extra spending, most probably ahead of Christmas**."
"There are some fantastic deals to be had at the moment. In fact, our latest customer survey showed that 39% were able to reduce their monthly repayments, some by as much as £500**."
"We are likely to see this buoyancy in the market continue over the coming months as lenders try to feed transactions through the pipeline ahead of the implementation of the MMR in April. While harsh weather may temper the growth in the house purchase market, remortgage activity in the coming winter months is likely to prove much more resilient."
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*Source CML, LMS estimates for September/October (LMS's UK remortgage lending estimates are based on LMS's up to date internal conveyancing data, which, every month, covers many thousands of remortgage completion transactions).
**LMS processes over 28% of all remortgage transactions in the UK and the report is compiled using this data.