Less than half (49 per cent) of brokers felt positive or very positive about the homebuyer market; only a very slight drop from the previous quarter (52 per cent) but a more considerable decrease from last year, where 75 per cent felt positive or very positive.
A total of 18 per cent felt negative or very negative this quarter, where the mean score for this question falls slightly from 0.46 last quarter to 0.33 at present. The mean score for September 2003 was 0.85.
While in June of this year 41 per cent of respondents had written more mortgages over the preceding quarter, just 35 per cent stated the same this iteration. Fewer respondents pointed to no change where 27 per cent had written the same number of mortgages as in the previous quarter, compared with 34 per cent in June.
The resulting negative mean (-0.02) is considerably lower than those recorded six months and one year previously and so appears not to be attributable to a seasonal fluctuation but to a fundamental change in the market.
38 per cent indicated that they had seen overall business activity rise over the quarter ending in September. This represents a drop from 46 per cent in June.
Furthermore, 35 per cent had experienced a fall in business activity, an increase from 27 per cent in June.
Kevin Morgan, managing director of Consilium Financial Planning, said: “There’s always business to be done but you have to make sure you’re in there and pitching for it.
“We’ve seen no slowdown and business volumes are up. In terms of new purchases, figures are slightly down, but things are still buoyant.”
