What Drives the Ongoing Declines in Mortgage Demand?

Data for lending to households and businesses data for December 2018 was released earlier this week.  This data series replaces the old housing finance and lending finance series and includes some different data.  Specifically focusing on lending to households the data shows that the weakening of demand for mortgages has continued.

As the above chart shows, investor mortgage lending has been weakening for some time however, over recent months there has been a rapid slowdown in lending to…