Financial advisers in the mortgage market have only modest confidence about the housing market according to a recent Paragon Mortgages FACT index survey. The confidence factor reported this year is substantially down on the same period over each of the past three years.

Despite this stagnation, there is an upturn in the overall trend. Financial advisers expect to increase the amount of mortgage business they arrange by 5.2 per cent during the last quarter of the year. The types of mortgages purchased are changing. Capital and interest mortgages now account for half the market while endowment mortgages continue their steady decline. The market share for discount mortgages has almost doubled from 19 to 40 per cent of reported cases during the summer.