New mortgage lending figures are “pleasantly surprising”

The latest Council of Mortgage Lenders statistics have been dubbed “encouraging” by one expert, who suggested he had not been anticipating them.

According to the organisation, house purchase loans were up by 23 per cent to 45,000 in June, while remortgage loans rose 13 per cent to 34,000 – numbers John Charcol’s Ray Boulger called “pleasantly surprising”.

The senior technical manager said it was “interesting” that remortgaging levels have picked up, as he believed they would probably start to go down over the course of the year.

However, it was not the direction that the mortgage segment went in that he found surprising.

“We have seen a steady improvement for most of this year, but that’s a bigger increase than I was expecting,” he remarked.

Despite the monthly rise, loans for mortgages were still down by more than 50 per cent on the average recorded over the last seven years.

By Chris Trimble