The latest data on mortgage lending that mortgage credit has virtually dried up in the economy.
Total mortgage lending in the third quarter reached the staggering total of €623m, which is almost 50% of the level achieved in the third quarter of last year.
In the first nine months of the year a total of €1.82bn was lent for mortgages purposes, compared to €3.76bn in the same period last year. It now appears that total mortgage lending for the full year will be around €2.3bn. This compares to total lending of €39.9bn at the peak of the madness in 2006.
These numbers are quite simply staggeringly weak and suggest the market is effectively dead. The banks could well argue that this is due to the lack of demand for mortgages from a suffering and pretty downbeat populace, but in reality the banks are quite simply not in the business of lending and there is unlikely to be a recovery in the housing market until they start to do so.
