Mortgage lending in Britain dropped last month before the Bank of England raised interest rates above the level set since the financial crisis, new banking industry figures show.
The industry body UK Finance said the number of mortgages approved for new house purchases dropped by 4.3% in July to 39,584 compared with the same month a year ago. City economists had forecast around 40,700, suggesting a renewed slowdown in the housing market.
Threadneedle Street raised the cost of borrowing earlier this month, making it more expensive for prospective homeowners to secure a mortgage, while concerns about a no-deal Brexit are also discouraging buyers. Analysts said the rise in rates to 0.75% from 0.5% could further weigh on demand for mortgages.
Samuel Tombs, the chief UK economist at the consultancy Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the figures demonstrate the housing market is fundamentally slowing, adding: “The hike [from the Bank of England] will unnerve many buyers.”
The latest snapshot of the mortgage market comes as British households face sluggish wage growth and higher levels of inflation since the Brexit vote. Peter Tyler, a director at UK Finance, said: “The broader economic outlook remains mixed, with households continuing to see their incomes being squeezed by rising inflation.”
Earlier this month, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors reported broadly flat new-buyer enquiries and newly agreed sales in July. Some surveyors said Brexit was restraining sellers, while hot weather and the school summer holidays also had an impact.
House-price growth across the country has been slowing in recent months, with property values in London falling for the first time since the financial crisis. The Office for National Statistics said the north-east is the only region in which house prices are yet to surpass their 2008 levels.
While the price of a property in England has grown by 25.3% between 2007 and 2017, the north-east has fallen by 7.1% over the same period. Statisticians said there was a larger supply of homes versus the rest of the country, while falling numbers of people between the ages of 16 to 64 had weighed on the demand for homes.
The figures do, however, suggest buying property in the north-east region has become more affordable in real terms over the past decade, versus the London market, amid a growing north-south divide.
Tanya Jackson of Yorkshire Building Society said: “There is a distinct divide between the north and south of the country when it comes to house-price growth in relation to wage growth, which has become even more pronounced since the financial crash.”
