This morning Reuters revealed that mortgage approvals by British banks have increased by 37.8% from January last year. Although this initially appears positive, the UK has actually seen a record low for net lending. The Daily Mail has said that lending for January is the lowest for eight and a half years, with an end to stamp duty partly responsible.

December saw lending reach £10.92 billion, with people wanting to take advantage of the stamp duty threshold staying at £175,000 until the turn of the new decade. Now it has fallen back by £50,000, and activity has inevitably lessened.

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Nearly half of all UK savings accounts pay interest rates of 0.5%, new research by financial information service Moneyfacts reveals.

Of these accounts, nearly half pay 0.1% or less, as many providers have made dramatic rate cuts in recent months. Moneyfacts reported that one in 10 savings accounts have cut their savings rates since last March, although 3.5% increased rates.

Today the Bank of England kept the official Bank rate at 5% for the eighth month in a row.

Michelle Slade of Moneyfacts suggested that interest is very low on some savings accounts because banks chose to cut their rates ahead of new rules stipulating that providers must give two months’ notice before they cut interest rates.

“It is savers, such as pensioners, who rely on the income from their savings to supplement their income who end up worse off,” she said.

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UK house prices rose 1.2% in October, marking the fourth consecutive monthly increase, according to the Halifax.

Since the beginning of the year, house prices have risen by 2.9%, and October’s rise was double that predicted by analysts. However, the average house price was £165,528, which is still 4.7% lower than October last year. Prices are now 7.1% higher than in April, when they had reached their trough following a 23% fall since the previous August.

Martin Ellis, the Halifax’s housing economist, warned that the recent rise in house prices was mainly due to demand for property outstripping supply. He added that low interest rates, reduced property prices since the summer of 2007 and a lack of available property had all contributed to rising demand for homes.

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Mortgage approvals rose to their highest level since March 2008 in September, the Bank of England has reported.

The number of mortgages approved for houses purchased rose by 3,000 in September to 56,000.
Non-mortgage borrowing by individuals shrank for the third consecutive month, representing the most sustained fall since records began in 1993.

Figures released by HM Revenue & Customs show a rise in house sales to 82,000 in September, double that of January.

“Lending activity has recovered in recent months, when compared to the start of the year, as buyers and sellers tentatively return to the market,” said Adrian Coles, of the Building Societies Association (BSA).

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The Financial Services Authority has ordered the GMAC-RFC mortgage lender to repay £7.7 million plus interest to 46,000 of its customers, after it imposed unfair charges on borrowers who fell behind with their repayments. The company has been charged an additional £2.4 million.

GMAC-RFC apologised and admitted some its charges had been excessive.

“In hindsight, we fully accept that for certain fees our estimates of the costs were not proportionate to the additional administration actually required,” said a spokesman for the lender.

“We will be writing to customers who incurred these specific charges when in arrears and will re-credit the charges plus interest,” he added.

Since its launch in 1998, GMAC-RFC grew to become one of Britain’s largest mortgage lenders, but it stopped offering new loans last year.

The FSA’s investigation into company activity between 2004 and 2008 revealed a series of failings, including “unfair and excessive” charges for people in arrears, the commencement of repossession proceedings before all other options had been considered, and a lack of proper training among staff for dealing with arrears cases and repossessions.

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The European Union has approved proposals to split nationalised Northern rock into two businesses, possibly heralding a partial sell-off.

One of the businesses would function as a “good bank”, containing Northern Rock’s sund assets, including most retail deposits and low-risk mortgages. The remaining “bad” bank would hold the remaining mortgages and repay outstanding government loans.

Northern Rock said the EU’s approval was “an important and positive step”.

Whilst the good bank will eventually be sold to a third party, potentially by the time of next year’s general election, the bad bank will have its assets run down until it goes into liquidation. Potential buyers include Virgin, Tesco Bank and National Australia Bank, which owns the Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank.

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Lenders will have to carry out rigorous checks on homebuyers’ monthly spending habits before issuing new mortgages, under new rules announced today by the UK’s financial regulator to clamp down on reckless lending.

Homebuyers will need to prove their ability to repay the loans, by providing details of their income, outgoings and any existing loans.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is also expected to ban self-regulation mortgages, where borrowers do not have to prove their income.

However, the FSA has stopped short of imposing caps on loan-to-value or loan-to-income mortgages, and a ban on 100% mortgages, deciding instead to crack down on risky lending.

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House prices continued to rise last month, fuelled by low interest rates on borrowing and a shortage of properties coming onto the market.

According to the Halifax, house prices increased by 1.6% in September, the third monthly rise in a row and the fifth that the lender has recorded this year. Last week Nationwide reported a 0.9% rise in prices last month, triggering hopes of a more rapid market recovery.

However, economists predict that the recent rise in house prices is likely to slow towards the end of the year and into next.

House prices have risen by 1.7% since the end of last year, to an average of £163,533, and by 5.9% since April last year, when prices had plunged to a low of just £154,490.

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The British Property Federation (BPF) has called for tougher regulation on buy-to-let mortgages. It said that the Financial Services Authority (FSA) should take the initiative on a “crackdown on reckless lending”, which would help refinance the housing market.

Currently, the federation said, buy-to-let mortgages are treated like business loans, whereas the majority of home loans, such as owner-occupier mortgages, are overseen by the financial watchdog.

The BPF said that it had discussed the status of buy-to-let mortgages with the FSA and Treasury as early as 2005. It added that all three parties had revealed a “wholesale awareness of dubious practice”, but that the FSA and Treasury “said the problem was the other’s responsibility”.

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The Financial Services Authority has told banks and building societies to compensate customers who may have been mis-sold payment protection insurance.

The ruling covers firms that have sold more than 40% of their “single premium” PPI policies at the same time as giving unsecured personal loans. The FSA will also target other companies that have mis-sold PPI when offering secured loans or credit cards.

The regulator has asked firms to reopen 185,000 rejected complaints about PPI.

Payment Protection Insurance is designed to cover debt repayments if you can’t work because of illness or redundancy, and is usually offered whenever you take out a loan, mortgage, credit card or store card, or bought something on credit.

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