Mortgage Lending Highest Since February 2023

30th April 2024

The Bank of England has released the latest mortgage lending statistics.

Individuals borrowed, on net, £0.3 billion of mortgage debt in March, compared to £1.6 billion in February.

The annual growth rate for net mortgage lending remained slightly negative at -0.1% in March. Gross lending rose from £18.6 billion in February to £20.1 billion in March, its highest amount since February 2023. Likewise, gross repayments increased from £16.6 billion to £19.5 billion over the same period.

Net approvals (that is, approvals net of cancellations) for house purchases, which is an indicator of future borrowing, continued their upward trend, increasing from 60,500 in February to 61,300 in March - the highest number of net approvals since September 2022 (65,400). Conversely, net approvals for remortgaging (which only capture remortgaging with a different lender) decreased from 37,700 to 34,200 over the same period (Chart 1).