2013 Mortgage Approval High

2013 Mortgage Approval High.

Mortgage approvals were at a high last year with 734,969 home loans being approved. This was up 20% on the year before where only 612,564 were approved.

The trend is predicted to continue this year as the government backed Help to Buy scheme gets into full swing. The Help to Buy scheme allows new home buyers to gain access to funds they would normally struggle to get.

2012 saw a lot of first time buyers being locked out of the market with no access to loans. However even though mortgage demand is high, mortgages were not predicted to get any lower.

The Bank of England has said that at the end of last year lending to individuals had hit a new high with consumer debt reaching £1.435 trillion. This was linked to people taking a safer and less risky approach to borrowing during the financial crisis.