The banks’ overall lending has grown by around £30 billion since 2008, an increase of more than 40%, as they aim to help young people and families across Britain to make that next move and get on with their lives.
In the last five years 338,000 customers have received a mortgage for a new home: 147,500 (43%) first-time buyers to the value of £18.3 billion and 190,500 next-time buyers (£31.3 billion).
Help to Buy
The Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme spurred demand from customers looking to get on the property ladder in 2013.
Six months since its launch, the banks have received more than 6,800 applications and have helped almost 2,330 customers to buy their home. Eight in 10 Help to Buy property purchases have been made outside London and South East.
NatWest and RBS aim to help 25,500 first and next time buyers through the Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme over three years.
Open for business
Lloyd Cochrane, Head of Mortgages at NatWest and RBS, said: “RBS and NatWest are open for business. Our aim is to double our market share of mortgage lending to homebuyers across Britain, helping as many customers as possible to buy their home as we play our role in the recovery and the future growth of the UK.
Potential customers interested in borrowing a mortgage can find out more about NatWest and RBS products through any of their branches around the UK, via the phone or the RBS and NatWest websites.
The websites also provide a range of tools, from a monthly budget calculator to help prospective homebuyers start saving a deposit to tools that help people choose the right mortgage for their circumstances, work out how much they can borrow and how future rate changes could affect their repayments.
Postcode lending data
Postcode lending data recently released by NatWest and RBS shows that one fifth, or £19bn, of RBS’s mortgage lending is in six of the UK’s largest cities; Central London (central postcodes), Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Edinburgh and Bristol. The remaining four fifths, or £79bn, takes place outside these cities across the country with significant amounts of lending in all of the UK’s 120 postcode area geographies ranging from the Lerwick to Truro.
