Britons invest £5.8bn in housing equity
Britons injected £5.832bn of equity into their homes in the first three months of this year, the smallest injection in a year, Bank of England data showed on Monday.
That compared with an equity injection of £7.136bn in the last three months of 2010, which had been the highest since records began in 1970.
The quarter one figure was equivalent to -2.3 per cent of post-tax income.
Britons have injected equity into their homes for the past three years, reversing the trend of home equity withdrawal to fund other spending that had dominated the previous decade.
A Bank of England article last month said that the fall in housing equity withdrawal – and move to injections of housing equity – since the financial crisis was likely to reflect a fall in the number of housing transactions, with little sign that households in aggregate were making an active effort to pay down debt more quickly than in the past.