Figures recently released have shown that 2009 mortgage lending was 60% lower than for 2007. The fourth quarter of 2009 saw a dramatic improvement in the number of mortgages taken out, which is believed to partially attributed to the UK governments initiative to boost the housing market by offering a stamp duty tax break that ended on 31^st December 2009.

The total lending from mortgage lenders for 2009 was £143.6bn, which is down by 43% from the 2008 figure of £254.1bn, and a further 60% lower than the recorded figure of £362.6bn for 2007.

The dramatic drop in the number of mortgages in 2009 was attributed to the low numbers of mortgages completed in the first part of 2009.

House purchases, which includes first time buyer mortgages, totalled 517,000 for the whole of 2009, which was a slight increase from the 516,200 recorded during 2008, but that figure was just over half of those before the recession started bite, with 2007 recording 1,015,100 people buying a new house or remortgaging.