LONDON (Reuters) -The number of mortgages approved by British lenders for house purchase fell more than expected to 60,463 in April from a downwardly revised 63,603 in March as the market adjusts to higher purchase taxes, Bank of England data showed on Monday.
Earlier government data showed that British house purchases surged in March to take advantage of the final month of an exemption from purchase taxes for many buyers, before slumping in April. Mortgage approvals tend to be given around a month before purchases complete.
Monday’s BoE data showed that net mortgage lending fell by 759 million pounds ($1.03 billion) in April – the largest monthly drop since January 2024 – after a 12.957 billion pound rise in March.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast that there would have been 63,000 mortgage approvals in April and a 500 million pound decline in net lending.
Unsecured consumer lending rose by a net 1.580 billion pounds – above economists’ 1.1 billion pound forecast – and the annual growth rate rose to 6.7% from March’s 6.2%, the fastest growth since October 2024.
($1 = 0.7382 pounds)
(Reporting by David Milliken; editing by Suban Abdulla)
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