Banks Announce 4% Rise in Mortgage Appovals
The amount of mortgage approvals in March this year has risen by 4% to 39,230 and according to the figures released by the Bank of England, the rise in mortgage approvals might continue going up.
The sum of all the mortgages approved by the banks in March came to £4.6 billion, this is a £900m increase on the previous month, although this increase is not as large as the monthly average of £1.6 billion or even as large as the February increase of £1.5 billion, however, the overall sum of money that had been approved through mortgages in March, £4.6 billion which was well over the estimated monthly average that was calculated using figures from the previous 6 months.
There was also some encourgaging news from the building societies, the overall amount of mortgages that had been approved in March rose to £1,542 million which is double the amount approved in the previous month.
Finally, there have also been figures released by the British Bankers Association regarding lending rates to small businesses. Their figures showed how lending from banks to small businesses had risen by £271 million in March. However, these figures do not match with the results that the Treasury Committee released saying how small businesses are finding it harder to borrow money from the banks.
Although these figures may sound good, mortgage lending is more important that mortgage approvals, the mortgage lending in March rose by £800 million which is not as much as expected and a lot less than the monthly average of £1.2 billion.
Although all of the above figure releases are good news for the economy and the housing market, there are still concerns that house prices could slump again in the next few months, and even if they didn’t, the economy is still a very fragile area.
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