Mortgages Hit New Record in June
July 31st, 2006 | POSTED BY ROB
Mortgage lending grew to ever more record-breaking levels over the course of June, hitting a total £20.5 billion, the British Banking Association (BBA) has announced.
Net mortgage lending (the total minus repayments and redemptions was up £5.6 billion, compared with £5.8 billion in May and an average of £5.3 billion over recent months.
The report also noted a shift in the UK’s debt burden from unsecured credit card and personal loans into mortgages.
Credit card spending fell by £0.2 billion, while net lending on overdrafts and loans grew by £0.2, half the recent average monthly rise of £0.4 billion.
Director of BBA statistics David Dooks noted that although up on poor figures from June 2005, the number of new approvals was nonetheless down on historical figures.
“Although gross mortgage lending reached record levels in June, numbers of approvals though stronger than in mid-2005 were weaker than at the equivalent time in either 2003 or 2004,” he said.
“The relatively strong retail sales reported for June do not seem to have been reflected in consumer credit lending which has continued to show the weakness, particularly in credit card borrowing, which has been apparent for most of this year.”
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