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Mortgage Monitor - April 2015

House purchase approvals dip 2.4% from February to March, with 60,280 loans approved

First-time buyers particularly cautious in the run-up to the General Election: higher LTV loans see a marked reduction, with just 9,343 such loans in March – down 10.5% from February

Nevertheless, higher LTV lending remains strong in the North – Yorkshire and the Northwest hold the highest proportion of higher LTV loans

House purchase approvals dropped in March as borrower uncertainty slowed demand in the run-up to the General Election, according to the latest Mortgage Monitor from e.surv, the UK’s largest chartered surveyor.

With the election closing in, there were just 60,280 loans for house purchase made this March, a 2.4% dip from the 61,760 seen in February.

This figure also represents a 10.0% drop compared to March 2014, when there were 66,970 such loans. This is, however, the smallest annual fall seen for half a year, as we move past yearly comparisons with what proved to be a one-off peak in lending last year.

On a quarterly basis, there were 182,747 house purchase approvals in Q1 2015, compared to 178,579 in Q4 2014.