As we peruse the data for the impact of all the Bank of England actions in this pandemic we have also been updated on its main priority. From the Nationwide Building Society.
“UK house prices fell by 1.7% over the month in May, after
taking account of seasonal effects – this is the largest
monthly fall since February 2009. As a result, the annual rate of house price growth slowed to 1.8%, from 3.7% in April.”
According to them things had been going really rather well before the May reverse.
“In the opening months of 2020, before the pandemic struck
the UK, the housing market had been steadily gathering
momentum. Activity levels and price growth were edging up thanks to continued robust labour market conditions, low borrowing costs and a more stable political backdrop
following the general election.”
Personally I am rather dubious about the April number but we do have a large fall for May and also something of a critique for the suspended official index from the Office for National Statistics.
Mortgage activity has also declined sharply. Nevertheless,
our ability to generate the house price index has not been
impacted to date, as sample sizes have remained sufficiently large (and representative) to generate robust results.
Rents
Perhaps such news is all too much for the boomers as I note the BBC reporting this today.
Lockdown break-ups, job losses and urgent relocations are thought to have led to a surge in the rental sector.
Demand for lettings in Great Britain is up by 22% compared to last year, according to property giant Rightmove.
Experts say the lifting of lockdown restrictions has released “two months of pent-up tension” in the market.
The supply of new rents is not keeping up with demand, however, prompting fears the surge will push up costs and leave some struggling to find homes.
The article tries to give the impression that rents are rising but provides no evidence for this at all, as the data set only has demand. It seems to lack a mention of the numbers in the data set which showed larger demand declines in the pandemic. We seem back to the get in now before rents boom message that is so familiar as the media parrots what the industry wants.
“I think we were lucky really because we got in there before demand boomed.”
On a personal level some people were viewing in my block yesterday. Fair play to the viewers who put on masks, but sadly the estate agent who is more likely to spread the virus did not bother with any PPE.
Consumer Credit
Even in the hot summer weather we are seeing the spine of the Monetary Policy Committee will have seen a sudden chill as these numbers came in.
New gross borrowing fell to £11.8 billion in April, roughly half its February level. Repayments on consumer borrowing have also fallen sharply, by 19% since February, reflecting payment holidays. On net, the larger fall in gross borrowing meant people repaid £7.4 billion of consumer credit in April, double the repayment in March, which itself was a record repayment (Chart 3). The extremely weak net flows of consumer credit meant that the annual growth rate fell below zero in April, to -0.4%, the weakest since August 2012.
What is happening here is that each month there is a large amount of new borrowing but also repayments and the usual situation is that we see net borrowing and in recent years lots of it. In April the amount of new borrowing fell and for once the use of the word collapse is appropriate whereas the level of repayments fell by much less. Thus the net amount swung by as much as I can ever recall.
In terms of the detail the main player was credit card borrowing.
The majority (£5.0 billion) of net consumer credit repayments were on credit cards, while £2.4 billion of other loans were also repaid in April. The annual growth rate of credit card lending was negative for the second month running, falling to -7.8%, compared with 3.5% in February before borrowing fell. Growth in other loans and advances remained positive, at 3.1%.
Mortgages
There was a similar pattern to be found here although in this instance it was not enough to turn the net figure negative. Also the bit I have emphasised is a signal of the financial distress I have both feared and expected.
Lending has also fallen sharply. Gross (new) mortgage borrowing fell to £14.4 billion, 38% lower than in February (Chart 5). Repayments on mortgage lending also fell sharply, to £13.9 billion, 26% lower than in February. This reflects a sharp fall in full repayments of loans, as well as the effect of payment holidays. The sharper fall in gross lending than repayments means that net mortgage borrowing fell, and was only £0.3 billion in April compared to an increase of £4.3 billion in February. This was the lowest net increase since December 2011.
One area that I do expect to pick up is this.
Approvals for remortgage (which include remortgaging with a different lender only) have fallen by less, to 34,400, 34% lower than in February.
With my indicator for fixed mortgage interest-rates ( the five-year Gilt yield) so low and effectively around 0% I expect some cheaper mortgage rates and hence more remortgaging, for those that can. As to mortgage rates they did this.
The effective interest rate paid on the stock of floating-rate mortgages fell 46 basis points, to 2.39%, the lowest rate since this series began in 2016; and the rate on new floating-rate loans fell 35 basis points to 1.48%.
They do not often tell us the mortgage rates but I guess they wanted to emphasise their own actions.
The rate paid by individuals on floating-rate mortgage borrowing fell a little further in April, however, as the MPC’s March Bank Rate cuts continued to pass through.
Business Lending
You might like to recall as you read the bit below that all of the credit easing since the summer of 2012 has been to boost small business lending.
Private sector businesses of all sizes borrowed little extra from banks in April. Small and medium sized businesses drew down an extra £0.3billion in loans from banks, on net, a similar amount as in March. The annual growth rate of borrowing by SMEs was 1.2%, in line with the growth rate since mid 2019.
For newer the readers the central banking game is to claim you are boosting lending to SMEs and then express surprise when it is mortgage lending and unsecured credit to consumers that rises and soars respectively.
The numbers below are mostly because many businesses have been desperate for cash.
But strength in borrowing by the public administration and defence industry meant total borrowing by large businesses was £12.9 billion in April. While this total is very strong by historical standards, it is down from £32.4 billion in March. The annual growth rate of borrowing by all large businesses increased to 15.4%, much stronger than the growth rate of around 5% in late 2019.
There will be quite a complicated mixture there as we no note lower and sometime zero sales colliding with many expenses continuing.
This is an ongoing problem where big businesses get help. As you can see they can access bank loans and the various Bank of England schemes are designed for them too.
In April, firms raised £16.1 billion from financial markets, on net, the highest amount raised since June 2009 and significantly stronger than the previous six month average of £23 million. Within this, firms issued £7.7 billion of bonds, £7.0 billion of commercial paper (including funds raised through the Covid Corporate Financing Facility), and £1.4 billion of equity.
It is not easy as for obvious reasons a central bank can help a large business in ways that it cannot help a corner shop or one (wo)man band but the truth is that they also get a bit lazy and could try much harder.
Comment
I have held back the money supply data for this section and here it is.
These additional sterling deposit ‘flows’ by households, private non-financial businesses (PNFCs) and financial businesses (NIOFCs), known as M4ex, rose by £37.3 billion in April. The strength was driven by households and PNFCs. The increase was smaller than in March, when money increased by £67.3 billion.
An interesting decline in the monthly number but the main message here is the £104.6 billion in only two months which compares to a total of £2364.4 billion. So a bit short of 5% in only 2 months! The annual rate is now 9%. On terms of economic impact then that is supposed to give us a nominal GDP growth rate also of 9% in a couple of years. Because of where we are there are all sorts or problems with applying that rule but it is grounds for those who have inflation fears. Oh and as to how this is created well some £13.5 billion of QE a week sure helps.
One other factor will be that these aggregate numbers will hide very different individual and group impacts. For example some with mortgages will be in financial distress whereas others will be using lower rates to increase repayments. The same will be true of businesses with sadly as I have explained above smaller ones usually getting the thin end of the wedge. These breakdowns are as important as the aggregate data but often get ignored.