January this year saw the lowest number of home owner loan and mortgage applications since 2002, although most experts believe that this is largely due to factors such as, the usual seasonal decline in loans, particularly bad weather and the rush by many home buyers to beat the end of the stamp duty holiday at the end of last year.

Despite this drop in loan applications, there were more home owner loan products on the market by the end of January this year, than at any tome in the previous twelve months, according to the latest figures from Moneyfacts.co.uk.

Although there were only 35,000 new home owner loan applications made throughout the month of January, the total number of available loan products from lenders increased to 2,019 and although this is still only a small fraction of the number of loan deals available a few years ago, there is now a wider choice for potential borrowers than they have had for the past twelve months.

What is even better news, particularly for first time buyers, is that many of the new deals being introduced by lenders are starting to relax their lending criteria slightly and offer higher loan to values ratios on their products. There are now a much higher proportion of loan deals which offer up to 90 per cent loan to value.

Darren Cook at Moneyfacts.co.uk said “There is an indication that competition within the mortgage market is getting stronger and more products are being made available to customers with small deposits, but these are still priced at a premium.”

“With product numbers on the increase, the question of quantity over quality arises. But this mortgage market dictates and history shows us that with quantity comes quality and open competition on interest rates.”