Housing markets continues upwards
Published On 29 November 2006
New figures from the Bank of England indicate that the UK's housing market continues to grow.The bank's latest mortgage lending figures show that lending was up £9.8 billion on September's levels, an increase of 11.3 per cent from October 2005.
These impressive figures are despite record housing prices and a quarter point interest rate hike in August.
Milan Khatri, chief economist at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics), said that rising property sales "are not just limited to the central London housing market".
"Throughout the country consumers will start to experience a deterioration in affordability conditions, as has been the case in London in the past year," he added.
A number of experts are predicting that November's interest rate rise to five per cent may spell the end for the UK's buoyant housing market.
Some 128,000 home loans were approved in October, the highest figure since December 2003.
