Home loan lending improvement in January

By Nicholas Boyle

The Bank of England (BoE) has released figures showing an improvement in home loan lending in January, as the property market `recovered some of the ground it lost` following the cold snap in December, The Independent reports.

Net home loan lending (which strips out redemptions and repayments) reached £1.8bn in January - its highest level for 12 months, and a substantial improvement on the contraction of £268m seen in December.

The number of loans approved for house purchase also saw a rise - up 7% to 45,723.

Yet despite `bouncing back` from the 21-month low seen in December, there were still fewer loans `in the pipeline` for people purchasing a property than there had been in November.

The number of approvals per month was still a lot lower than the 70,000-80,000 which economists see as `consistent with a stable housing market` - and less than half the level we saw during the credit boom (more than 100,000).

Tags: loan, loans, lending, borrow

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