Mortgage approvals remain static in November

4 January 2012 11:27 am | By Natalie Thomas

There were 52,854 approvals for house purchases in November, up only slightly on October’s 52,786, the latest figures from the Bank of England show.

Its Trends in Lending data released today, shows the number of approvals for remortgaging were down to 31,154 in November from 34,004 in October, resulting in overall mortgage approvals falling to 104,853, down from 107,555 in October.

However gross mortgage lending increased to £12.6bn in November, up from £12.1bn in October.

Capital Economics UK economist Samuel Tombs says: “The latest UK lending figures show that the upward trend in mortgage approvals seen for most of 2011 slowed in November. At least this exceeded the widely-held expectation of a fall in approvals.

“However, we fear that approvals for new house purchase might soon start to fall as banks further restrict the availability, and raise the price, of credit in response to the deterioration in wholesale funding markets.”

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