By Ed Towner

Gross mortgage lending in November totalled an estimated £13 billion, registering the fourth consecutive year-on-year rise, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML).

This represents an increase of 5% from October and 13% from the same period last year, and the level of gross lending in 2011 is expected to total around £138 billion.

According to the CML, 2012 will see £133 billion in gross lending and £5 billion in net lending, although with so much economic uncertainty there could be considerable variation in either direction.

There is expectation that the poor economic climate will result in a continued low level of housing transactions. It is thought that 2011 will finish with around 852,000 mortgage transactions and this figure could fall to 825,000 next year.

As homeowners struggle with mortgage repayments, the forecast suggests there will be an increasing pressure on the household sector as repossessions are expected to rise by an estimated 8,000 to 45,000 in 2012.

The mortgage market has a great dependency on the eurozone - if these problems can be sorted and the previous improvement of funds and availability reappear, this could have great implications on household's appetite to borrow, adds the body.

CML chief economist Bob Pannell hopes that the economy will grows to the level where mortgages become easier to come by in 2012.

"The weak state of the wider economy and household finances creates a challenging and highly uncertain backdrop for the housing and mortgage markets," he explains.

"As a by-product of sovereign debt worries, lenders face challenging conditions in wholesale funding markets, and these could have negative effects on the cost and availability of UK residential mortgages through some or all of next year."