Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The Survey of Mortgage Lenders (SML) was launched on 1st April 1992 to succeed the 5% Sample Survey of Building Society Mortgage Completions (BSM) (See GN:33191). The aims were to improve the survey in three principal ways: a) to broaden the range of institutions surveyed to incorporate other mortgage lenders in addition to building societies and Abbey National. With the entry of the high street banks and then the centralised lenders into the mortgage market, information provided by the building societies no longer represented the whole market in the way it did when the BSM was set up in the 1960s. b) to extend its coverage to include further advances, remortgages and top-up loans in addition to first mortgages. c) to increase the level of detail on the questionnaire especially with respect to the characteristics of the mortgage loan. An important consideration for users of the data is that the SML figures allow continuity with the BSM survey results to be maintained for a reasonable period.
Main Topics: Financial institution code, date mortgage completed, whether dwelling is wholly or partly occupied by borrower. Mortgage amount, type of advance, whether solely for purchase of property, period of mortgage, gross rate of interest, whether the interest charged is fixed or variable rate, whether interest payments are discounted or deferred, repayment method, source of mortgage business, purchase price and whether discounted in any way, location of dwelling, whether new, age of dwelling, type of dwelling, number of habitable rooms, number, sex and age of borrowers, basic income of main borrower, other income and total income on which mortgage is based, whether applicant previously owner occupier, previous tenure.
The institutions are divided into four strata according to the size of their assets. All the largest were asked to complete questionnaires on a sample of 5 per cent of their new mortgage advances. Mortgages are included if their reference numbers end in specified digits chosen so that every twentieth mortgage is selected. Institutions in the next stratum are arranged in order of size of assets and alternate institutions chosen each of which are asked to complete questionnaires on 10 per cent of their mortgages. In the next stratum 20 per cent of the mortgages of every fourth institution are obtained. The smallest institutions are completely excluded.
Postal survey
