Mortgage figures down

Improvements to mortgage funding can’t come soon enough for the British Bankers’ Association, which released data today showing that mortgage approvals last month fell by more than half from a year earlier - down 52 per cent on October 2007. The number of mortgage approvals for house purchases fell slightly between September and October this year, but it was still the second lowest number of approvals since the data started in 1997 and down two-thirds from its peak in July 2007. Stamp duty revenues have fallen 40 per cent in the last year also.