Mortgage approvals for house purchases slip 10%

Permalink: Mortgage approvals for house purchases slip 10%
by Gill Montia

For 2010 as a whole, house purchase mortgage approvals by the UK’s main High Street banks were down 10% on a year earlier, to fewer than 400,000, according to the British Bankers’ Association.

While the average value of house purchase approval fell slightly in December, to £143,300, the figure remained 1.6% higher than a year earlier.

Numbers of remortgage approvals in December were slightly stronger than the recent six-month average (24,109) but for 2010 as a
whole were some 7% lower than a year ago.

Approval numbers for equity withdrawal loans continued to be weak in the final month of 2010 and were down 12% compared with 2009.

Net mortgage lending (gross lending with repayments and redemptions stripped out) rose by £0.9 billion in December, the lowest increase
since June 1999.