Official figures release by The Bank Of England shows that both gross and net mortgage borrowing figures dropped across the board in December 2021. With January 2022 figures still to come, what can we say about this?
The Bank Of England
The BOE have said that net borrowing came to £3.6 billion in December 2021 which is a slight decrease from £3.8 billion in November 2021. Although not a drastic change, it’s still a significant drop considering we are still in a slump compared to pre pandemic figures. For the period February 2019 to February 2020 the BOE reported an average net borrowing figure of £4.2 billion, a figure most of us was hoping would be on the horizon again before the decrease in December 2021.
The BOE also reports that gross lending fell from £22.4 billion in November 2021 to £21.7 billion in December 2021. But it’s not all bad news as mortgage approvals increased across the board showing an encouraging trend that lenders are becoming more confident in borrowers and are relaxing their restrictions. Purchase borrowing approval increase from 66,700 in November 2021 to 71,000 in December 2021 and remortgage approvals went up from 44,600 in November 2021 to 44,900 in December. We hope to see these increase even more in 2022.
Oportfolio’s take
Content manager at Oportfolio mortgages Louis Mason had this to say: “It’s not overly surprising that borrowing figures have gone down as we are still recovering from the pandemic and people are still a little apprehensive about committing to buying or changing their current deals. We shouldn’t be disheartened by these figures, and they were likely to be lower in December compared to November anyway as people focused on the holiday period rather than mortgages! But it is encouraging to see that mortgage approvals are going up and people thinking about getting a new mortgage should be really positive about this as it shows just how confident the big banks are about the market at the moment. Now is a great time to start looking at a new mortgage and with the right help and guidance from a mortgage advisor.”
If you or anyone you know needs to talk to someone about a new mortgage, whether that’s for buying a new property or re-structuring your current home finance, please feel free to give our friendly and helpful advisors a call to see what we can do for you.
