LONDON (Reuters) – British mortgage approvals increased sharply in August to hit their highest in almost 13 years, a latest sign of a post-lockdown bounce-back in the housing market, data from the Bank of England showed on Tuesday.
Mortgage approvals jumped to 84,700, the data showed.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected about 71,000 approvals.
But consumer borrowing increased by only around 300 million pounds ($386 million) in August from July compared with a median forecast for a 1.45 billion-pound increase in the Reuters poll.
(Reporting by William Schomberg and David Milliken)