Mortgage approvals edge up in January for second monthly rise
British mortgage approvals edged up in January to show their second monthly increase, Bank of England data showed on Monday, a latest sign that a housing market slowdown may be starting to fade.
The figures also showed a surge in lending to businesses in January after plunging in December.
Mortgage approvals for house purchases numbered 60,786 in January, edging up from 60,349 in December to hit the highest level since September of last year. Analysts in a Reuters poll had forecast 61,000 mortgage approvals were made in January.
Tighter rules on mortgage lending took effect last year, requiring banks and building societies to make more rigorous checks on whether borrowers can afford their loans.
The number of approvals fell in most months last year, cooling house price growth and easing concerns about a bubble in the housing market.
Earlier on Monday, mortgage lender Nationwide said British house prices rose at the slowest annual pace since September 2013, increasing by 5.7 percent.
The BoE said net mortgage lending, which lags approvals, rose by 1.56 billion pounds, the same kind of pace seen in December.
The BoE said consumer credit grew by 817 million pounds in January, compared with a forecast of 900 million pounds in a Reuters poll of economists and picking up pace slightly from December, when growth its lowest in more than a year.
Despite only weak rises in wages for much of the past five years, Britain's economic recovery has become increasingly reliant on spending by households.
Lending to non-financial businesses swung to show an increase of nearly 1.9 billion pounds, its highest since May last year, compared with a plunge of nearly 4 billion pounds in December.
A BoE official said such volatility was not unusual and there were no particular factors behind the swing.
Official figures last month showed British business investment fell at its sharpest rate in nearly six years late last year, after tumbling global oil prices hit the North Sea petroleum industry
(Reporting by Andy Bruce and William Schomberg) ((uk.economics@reuters.com, +44 20 7542 5109)
