Approvals at lowest since 2009 – bar during Covid lockdown – as demand for new homes continues to fall
Britain’s mortgage market has contracted for a fifth month in a row, official figures show, as the jump in interest rates that followed Liz Truss’s September 2022 mini-budget continued to trigger a collapse in demand for new home loans.
The Bank of England said the drop in January took the number of mortgage approvals to the lowest level since 2009, which followed the 2008 financial crash, excluding the dramatic drop after the first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020.