Lloyds sees mortgage share fall

Lloyds Banking Group, which owns the country's biggest home loan lender, Halifax, suffered a fall in its share of the mortgage market last year. As it admitted that almost 80,000 of its mortgage customers were more than three months behind with their payments, the group said its share of new lending had fallen to 24% from 31% a year ago. The 13,100 rise in the number of homeowners struggling to keep up with their payments, compared with last year, represents 2.3% of the bank's customer base. Lloyds is the biggest banking group on the high street following its rescue take­over of HBOS at the height of the 2008 banking crisis when it inherited Halifax, traditionally the country's largest mortgage lender. The figures show a small improvement in the number of customers with properties in negative equity. Some 12% of customers with conventional mortgages owed more on their houses than they were worth at the end of the year, compared with 15% a year ago. Some 16% of buy-to-let customers were in the same position compared with 21% a year ago. Lloyds also appears to be shifting some of the properties it had repossessed as the number of homes on its books has fallen by 32% to 2,720. The bank added: "Average proceeds from the sale of repossessed properties are in excess of average valuations assumed in provisioning models." The size of outstanding mortgage balances at Lloyds fell by £3.7bn as customers repaid home loans. Gross new mortgage lending – which does not include mortgages that are repaid – was £35bn, a fall from £78bn in 2008. The overall size of the market also fell, though, to £143bn from £254bn in 2008.