Mortgage Distributor has just annouunced:
In August 2007 there were 45,590 products on the Trigold sourcing system and in February 2008 this had fallen to 21,988 equating to a drop of 52% in just six months. However, this is till just below the 25,000 products that were on the system in Feb 2005.
David Aylmer, marketing and business development director at Trigold, says: “These figures demonstrate the extent of the credit crunch on mortgage availability although it’s important to put this into context.
"Restricted access to wholesale funding together with tightened underwriting criteria from those lenders who still have lending capacity, has had, and will continue to have for some time, a significant impact on the extent of product choice available in the market and through intermediaries.
He adds: “However, over recent years we have witnessed a considerable increase in both the number of mortgage product providers and the products they made available.
"Live mortgage products in the UK intermediary market are still in excess of 2004 figures in the run up to mortgage regulation of 16,000.
"There is no doubt that mortgage brokers are finding products choices limited in some sectors such as sub-prime, but our evidence shows that broker activity remains strong with a mortgage being sourced on Trigold by a UK mortgage broker every second of the day.”
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