The trend in Mortgage lending is very much encouraging as the latest figures indicate a sharp rise of 23% in June. This is really a booster to the recession hit housing and property sector.

The number of loans disbursed is 45000 for the month of June as compared to 36500 in May. The quantum of loan disbursed also registered 26% increase as the figures touched 5.9 billion. These figures were released by The Council of Mortgage Lenders(CML).Paul Samter, renowned economist observed that the trend is encouraging as it is supported by reasonable prices.

As per the latest release from the Department of Communities and local government (DCLM) the price decline is showing improvement. The rate of decline is 10.7% for June compared to 12.7% for the previous month. The news which is most welcome is that the continuing decline in the construction activity in the real estate sector is showing some positive improvement as seen from the latest data available. The Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply reports the index balance is 47% the highest figure since March 2008. This clearly indicates the revival of construction activity. Taylor Wimpey reputed builder asserts that the conditions are good now and the losses are declining over the last six months.

Alistair Darling has catapulted a fresh attack on the bank bonuses- and revealed that he was ready to bring new laws to harness them. The Chancellor’s recent warning, just another among the several warnings given by government over the past twelve months, came in the wake of the announcement that Barclays made. The announcement was that it was awarding £30million reward pay just to five of their staff.

Figures over the last year have shown that the bankers received £7.6billion in their bonuses even though their enterprise has brought down the economy to such pathetic stage. Supporting comments that Mr. Darling made last February, he said that the civilians were rightly angry on how the banks behaved. He even added that if change in law was needed, that could be done too. Also, he has holds some traders responsible for the numerous problems that have blown up recently.

Right now the government is facing utter pressure to make stringent laws after FSA failed to get tougher with the respective banks. George Osborne, who is a Shadow Chancellor, insists that everything should stop now. Which is what Darling had said six months ago.

These days, finding a secured lender is becoming more and more difficult. A future mortgage owned by Citi group was the first one to hit the dust right at the beginning of the credit crunch. This lender lacked strict lending policies and gladly accepted self-declarations of not only self-employed applicants but also from employed applicants, that too, with no backup proof. All that a self-employed person had to prove to them was that he was genuinely self-employed. Many such future mortgagors and similar companies fell to ground. Eversince, we have been experiencing low interest rates and Mortgage Rates. The Bank of England’s lending rate dropped to as low as 0.05% and hence was responsible for the low rates. However, Halifax Building Society has announced and increase in the tracker mortgage rate to 3.5%, whose recent rate on Friday was 2.99%.

Their two year fixed rate is now at 4.10%. We have been told the house prices have been on the rise since the past three months. People selling their properties are selling them for prices less than 2.2% on an average. Both the statements contradict each other. Yet, the good news for this season is that world is getting out of recession. Before you can rejoice about it, there is another sad news, which says the unemployment will still remain on a high.

Newcastle, the UK’s 10th biggest building society, is at an advanced stage of takeover talks with rival Skipton and if the project is through it would form a £21 billion mutual with over 1.1 million people. Skipton and Newcastle would be then be a strong financial force to reckon with. Only Britannia and Nationwide after being taken into the Co-op would be larger in terms of assets.

Newcastle is recovering from a terrible 2008 which experienced a loss of £35.7 million because of revelation to failed Icelandic banks.

Skipton readily agreed to give £10 million to Newcastle by providing support to interest bearing shares.

But the problems of the society were still existent. Credit ratings companies remained worried about Newcastle’s condition. Last month, Fitch demoted Newcastle because of growing alarm over the standard of its business loan book.

Though Skipton was also demoted by Fitch, yet it is still in better condition than Newcastle and is considered by the FSA as one of the powerful building societies.

Profits of Skipton were £22.5 million last year and it also tookover Scarborough, another troubled mutual.

The UK property market is showing a confusing picture with Mortgage approvals being up in May but net mortgage lendings down by more than 30%. The Bank of England confirms that this is the more or less general trend of the UK market with each report revealing both positive and negative aspects of the property market. This has left several homeowners and investors confused as they are failing to understand the real trend of the market. However, this trend will become evident in the coming months.

May witnessed a rise of more than 43, 000 mortgage approvals against the average increase of 36, 000 over the last six months. May is the fourth consecutive month that saw an increase in mortgage approvals although there has been a fall in the net lending from £1.1 billion to £600 million in May. Though the UK property market has had enough chances to improve but something is holding it back. However, according to some experts the market will not improve until mortgage liquidity improves and the current limitations in the marketplace are removed.