Comment on the Bank of England money and credit figures from Adam Oldfield at Phoebus Software

29 February 2024

Adam Oldfield, chief revenue officer at Phoebus Software, says “Seeing that net mortgage approvals rose in January is an encouraging sign for the coming months, which is good news particularly when HMRC has also reported this morning that residential transactions fell in January. The Bank of England figures also show that the amount of mortgage debt repaid increased in January, another good sign in a month when many borrowers would be paying off credit card debt from Christmas.

“There are so many conflicting reports regarding the UK housing market, however. House prices falling, house prices rising, mortgage rates rising, lenders cutting rates, swap rates rising. The truth I suspect is somewhere in the middle, but lenders are the ones caught in the middle. Managing the complexities of reaching lending targets, whilst ensuring exposed borrowers are identified and managed, is paramount while the market remains in something of a flux.”

“With less than a week to go until the Budget, the last before a general election is called, will the Chancellor use this opportunity to announce measures to help people to get onto the property ladder? It’s been done before, in fact it’s a well-used mechanism for winning votes, especially from the younger generation. The question will be whether anything announced will be yet another sticking plaster for the housing industry?”