Mortgage approvals for the week ended August 8 appear to show approvals bottoming out in recent weeks after a long decline that started in early 2007.
The number of mortgage approvals in the week ended April fell to 5,994, but is above the trough in the week endedJuly 25 of 5,888 and figures for the last 13 weeks show the rate of decline from a year ago seems to be bottoming out.
This suggests that demand for mortgages and therefore demand for housing may be picking up again after over a year of falling. But these approvals figures also include rollovers of fixed rate mortgages.
There was a surge of new two year fixed rate mortgages in the Spring of 2004 during the "Unbeatable" price war. They were renewed in a fresh bout of new lending in the spring of 2006. Those "Son of Unbeatable" mortgages are due to roll over in the Spring of 2008 and it appears we may be seeing these rollovers passing through the market, rather than brand new lending to fund house purchases.
Although it was notable that house sale volumes perked up slightly in July from June, prompting the Real Estate Institute to cite a recovery in the market.
