UK Mortgage Approvals Fell to 56,053 in July, the Fewest Since January 2024

UK lenders approved 56,053 house-purchase mortgages in July, the fewest since January 2024, as fixed-rate pricing rose again in the middle of the month.

British lenders approved 56,053 mortgages for house purchase in July, down from 58,215 in June and the lowest monthly total since January 2024, when the figure was 56,032. The Bank of England's Money and Credit release, published on 1 September, therefore records a two-and-a-half-year low arrived at by the narrowest of margins — 21 approvals separate July 2026 from the previous trough.

The scale of the fall depends on the yardstick

Anthony Codling of RBC Capital Markets put the decline at 3.7% on the month and 15% on the year, leaving approvals 7.3% below their five-year average. Measured instead against the past six months, which averaged roughly 60,800, July runs about 8% light. Either way the direction is the same and the magnitude is moderate: this is a market losing momentum rather than seizing up.

Remortgaging holds up where purchase lending does not

Remortgage approvals moved the other way, edging up to around 34,500 from 34,100 in June. The divergence is what one expects in a rate-sensitive market — borrowers rolling off expiring fixed deals have to transact whatever the pricing, while discretionary buyers can simply wait. On the same release, net consumer credit borrowing rose to £2.0 billion in July from £1.9 billion, made up of £0.9 billion on credit cards and £1.1 billion of other lending.

Mid-July repricing is what the market blames

Lucian Cook of Savills tied the weakness directly to the rise in fixed-rate mortgage costs in mid-July, which he said stopped improvement elsewhere from translating into completed business. Hina Bhudia of Knight Frank Finance pointed to geopolitical tension and elevated energy prices pushing mortgage rates higher, and Mark Harris of SPF Private Clients described swap rates as extremely volatile. The Negotiator reported the effective interest rate on newly drawn mortgages rising to 4.45% in July from 4.35%, with net mortgage lending falling to £4.3 billion from £7.7 billion in June — a much steeper drop than the approvals number alone suggests.

What it does to the price picture, and when

Glopra's UK data shows prices up 2.0% over twelve months against a national average of $3,850 per square metre, with a gross rental yield of 7.35% — the highest among the large western European markets we score. Bubble risk reads 41 out of 100, in the moderate band.

An approval is a commitment to lend, not a completed sale, so July's weakness will show up in autumn transaction volumes rather than in any index published now. That lag is also why a single soft month should not be read as a turn — approvals have been below 60,000 before in this cycle without prices following. What would change the reading is the effective rate. At 4.45% and rising, financing costs are doing the work here, and approvals are unlikely to recover far ahead of them.

Sources: PA via The Irish News (Bank of England Money and Credit, July 2026), 1 Sep 2026 https://www.irishnews.com/news/uk/home-buyer-mortgage-approvals-fall-to-lowest-level-in-more-than-two-years-4KPKZYIWCBLLJEXQIEOU2XVHNE/; The Negotiator, 2 Sep 2026 https://thenegotiator.co.uk/news/uk-housing-market-news/market-bounce-stalls-as-mortgage-approvals-fall/

Market data: United Kingdom