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.

David Dooks, BBA statistics director, also laid blame on forces of nature: “It was no surprise to see January mortgage figures falling back from December… There was a natural reaction in the January figures and the bad weather suppressed market activity.”

On a more positive note, people are maintaining their savings levels from the last six months, with the UK seeing an increase of £2.46 billion.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 11:58 am and is filed under Loans, Mortgages, Savings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.