It has been an extremely turbulent time in the housing and home owner loan market over the course of the past couple of years and the fluctuating house prices and lack of suitable finance through home owner loans and mortgage products has deterred many would be buyers from actually moving house, or even thinking about it, until the situation settles down somewhat.

Despite these problems, there have still been somewhere around 680,000 people have taken out a new home owner loan and moved house over the course of the past two years, according  figures from the Council of mortgage Lenders (CML).

A new survey, conducted by Abbey Mortgages, asked those people taking out a new loan in order to move house what their reasoning was for making the move at the time when they did. Almost a third of movers said that the reason was a desire to move up the property ladder, the most popular reason for moving.

A further 20 per cent said that it was because they needed more room. There were also more negative reasons for moving house. Just over 40,000 people were prepared to take out a larger loan in order to get into the catchment area for the school they wanted and almost 100,000 individuals moved house and applied for a new loan just to get away from their previous neighbours.

Nici Audhlam-Gardiner of Abbey Mortgages said “The saying “Love thy neighbour” seems long forgotten as so many of us plan to move each year just to get away from those next door. Despite this, people are still moving for positive reasons such as the desire to move up the property ladder or as a result of their dream home coming on to the market. We have seen a fifty per cent increase in the number of people applying for mortgages to buy a new home in recent months compared to the average monthly applications for purchase mortgages for the first half of the year.”