The latest set of mortgage statistics from UK Finance reveal further signs of buoyancy in the Northern Ireland housing market.

The first-time buyer market continues to post double-digit growth year-on-year. 2,700 new home-owners took out a mortgage in Q2 2018, that’s up 12.5% y/y and the highest figure since Q4 2005. Meanwhile the size of the loan advanced to new home-purchasers hit £100,000 for the first time.
Significant deposits remain a feature of the mortgage market for first-time buyers. The median deposit for both NI & UK first-time buyers currently stands at £17,000. That equates to three-quarters of the median annual salary of a full-time Northern Ireland employee aged 25-34 years of age. Few thirty year olds (the average age of a first-time buyer) can avail of this sort of cash without assistance from the so-called Bank of Mum & Dad / Bank of Grandmum & Grandad.
Unlike the first-time buyer market, growth in the home mover market remains lacklustre. The legacy of negative equity and little or no equity continue to act as a drag on this area of the market.
Only 1,600 loans were advanced for people moving house in Northern Ireland during Q2 2018. This represented a rise of 7% y/y but compares with a quarterly average of 4,000 for the decade 1997-2006.
Remortgage activity, which accounts for one-third of mortgage activity, has also been on the rise. The number of loans remained flat at an eight-and-a-half year high of 2,300 in Q2 2018. This represented a rise of 10% y/y but is still only one-third of the volume of remortgage activity that occurred between 2005-2008.
Overall, activity in Northern Ireland’s mortgage market continues to recover from the biggest property downturn in UK history. The first-time buyer market is driving this growth which in turn is being supported by individuals with access to sizeable deposits.
As far as deposits are concerned, the would-be first-time buyer market is being split into haves and have nots. For an increasing number of aspirational home-owners, saving for a deposit is particularly challenging within the context of ongoing house price growth, strong rent inflation, modest wage growth and rising utility bills.