ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the sources in turn and the final sections take up the question of marginal owner-occupation. The most important feature is the predominance of loans to firsttime buyers and this is associated, as one would expect, with a much higher proportion of pre-1919 properties purchased. The expansion of the owner-occupied sector has been an objective of government policy since 1919 at the very latest and this has brought with it recognition by ministers and civil servants that the penetration of classes and fractions of classes on relatively lower incomes might require state support in various ways. The market for clearing-bank house lending referred to above is one in which they are joined by the secondary banking system of the finance houses and merchant banks, and it concerns mortgage provision on down-market properties, typically pre-1919 property in the inner city of the great conurbations.
