Posted on 10/29/2013 8:09:07 AM PDT by whitedog57
The UK is an interesting counterpoint to the US housing and mortgage finance system.
Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) — U.K. mortgage approvals rose to the highest in 5 1/2 years in September, adding to signs of a strengthening property market.
Lenders granted 66,735 mortgages, the most since February 2008, compared with a revised 63,396 the previous month, the Bank of England said in a report in London today. Gross mortgage lending was 15.6 billion pounds ($25 billion), the highest since October 2008.
The September mortgage approvals figure exceeded economists forecasts. They predicted an increase to 66,000, based on the median of 23 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Net mortgage lending rose 1.03 billion pounds last month and consumer credit increased 411 million pounds, the BOE said.
Hometrack Ltd. said yesterday that house prices in England and Wales rose 3.1 percent in October from a year earlier, the biggest gain since 2007. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne’s Help to Buy program is stoking the property market and Hometrack said the gap between supply and demand widened further this month.
First, the UK has experienced Year-over-Year house price growth of 3.10% compared to the Case-Shiller US house price index growth of 12.82%.
ukhpvcd102913
In terms of UK mortgage approvals, I will compare that with US purchase mortgage applications.
ukmtgapp102913
The UK 5 year mortgage rate was falling with the US 30 year mortgage (until recently).
uk5usfreed
The US is moving in the opposite direction of the UK in terms of mortgage applications and approvals. However, the US house prices are skyrocketing while the UK (as a whole) is maintaining slow growth.
Thanks for posting this.
It confirms my suspicions with the way the House sales market has been picking up in recent months.
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