Good news - mortgage demand grows for the first time in six months

The overall mortgage market has grown in the past month according to e.surv - bringing to an end months of decline since November last year.

There were 67,035 loans (seasonally adjusted) approved in April, up compared to both last month and the same stage last year.

The number of loans increased 0.3 per cent compared to the 64,695 approvals in March. April’s total is also 1.7 per cent higher than the same month a year ago.

It says so-called ‘small deposit buyers’ - including almost all first time buyers - now constitute 21.5 per cent of the overall mortgage market in April; the share has been gradually rising in recent months, from 16.1 per cent in December.

April was the third month in a row that the proportion of loans given to home buyers with large deposits was below the 35 per cent mark. While market share increased slightly month-on-month, the trend in recent months has been towards small deposit and mid-market borrowers, according to e-surv.

Large deposit borrowers – defined as those with a deposit of 60 per cent or more – took 34.6 per cent of the market in April.

The e.surv figures follow its analysis of over one million mortgage valuations carried out between August 2006 and the present day. It says that each month its researchers analyse tens of thousands of valuations and use these trends to extrapolate from the Bank of England’s mortgage data to publish mortgage approval numbers for the whole of the UK.