By High street banks were responsible for a 5.4 per cent annual increase in mortgage approvals in April 2019, while approvals for home purchases improved to as much as 8.6 per cent over the same period, according to a recent household finances report by trade association UK Finance.
Despite the growth in mortgage approvals, gross mortgage lending in the UK residential market fell by 1.4 per cent on an annual basis in April and totalled £20.3 billion in that month.
High street bank gross mortgage lending also registered a decline in April, dropping by 3.6 per cent, to a total of £12.3 billion.
This news came after UK Finance estimated that the number of completed first-time buyer mortgages declined in March, with an increasing number of homeowners considering remortgaging instead, in a mortgage trends update.
Mortgage approvals identified as a “leading indicator”
UK Finance identified mortgage approvals as a “leading indicator” of lending in future months, estimating that house purchases had grown by 8.6 per cent on an annual basis in April, while remortgaging activity increased by 2.2 per cent during the same period.
Also, there were 44,034 house purchases in April, compared to just over 40,000 home purchases at the same time the previous year. Meanwhile, high street banks were estimated to have seen 2 per cent growth in mortgage-related household borrowing, according to UK Finance.
Remortgaging continues to grow
Remortgaging showed increased demand in April, with UK Finance claiming there were as many as 29,014 cases of it in that month alone, compared to 28,390 cases the same time last year.
Amidst increasing demand for remortgaging, financial comparison site Moneyfacts believe UK homeowners will increasingly seek to remortgage for the remainder of 2019, according to their research. This is because borrowers coming to the end of fixed-term mortgages this year are expected to seek to avoid higher interest rates, having locked in lower interest rates in previous years.
The Bank of England (BoE) has greatly contributed to changes in housing market behaviour in the past few years. In its last Inflation Report in early May, its Monetary Policy Committee indicated it planned to expect a gradual raising of interest rates over the coming years.
Many will be getting their ducks in a row before a Labour Govt occurs in 3 years time.
This will result in a Credit Crunch far worse than 2008.
Homeowners will be looking to make themselves resilient.
Doesn’t matter if prices crash.
As long as the mortgage can be serviced homeowners just have to survive 5 years of Labour idiocy.
Then they will be voted out so disastrously would they gave behaved.
Even idiot GR will realise by then that the Labour Marxists sold them a Unicorn.
Sanity will then prevail and Labour will be out for decades.