"The good news is that 2025 is set to be an even stronger year for the sector and we’ve already seen a welcome boost in the form of an early base rate reduction"
- Stephanie Daley - Alexander Hall
Alexander Hall analysed Bank of England data looking at mortgage approval levels across the UK property market over the last two decades, before using this historical data to forecast how the market is likely to perform in 2025.
The analysis shows that 2024 was a year of far greater stability for the UK property market, particularly with respect to the level of buyer activity seen across the market.
In total, there were some 754,983 mortgages approved for potential buyers, marking a 30.8% increase on the market lull seen the previous year in 2023 when just 577,173 mortgages were approved.
In fact, whilst 2023’s total of 577,173 was the lowest annual total seen since 2010, the 754,983 approvals seen throughout 2024 was the highest annual total since 2021, when the pandemic property market boom was in full swing, driven by the original stamp duty holiday.
Despite the fact that 2025 is set to see current stamp duty thresholds revert back to their previous levels, the forecast by Alexander Hall anticipates that it will be another year of growth for the mortgage sector.
The firm estimates that we could see 856,346 mortgage approvals take place over the course of the year, a 13.4% increase on 2024.
“2024 was a far better year with respect to mortgage market activity and we saw the number of approvals taking place climb considerably when compared to the previous year," explained Stephanie Daley, Director of Partnerships, "However, it’s fair to say that there was a slight air of disappointment given that we only saw two base rate reductions and this didn’t bring the improvement to mortgage affordability levels that many had hoped.
"The good news is that 2025 is set to be an even stronger year for the sector and we’ve already seen a welcome boost in the form of an early base rate reduction, but unlike last year, we’ve also seen lenders reducing rates in anticipation of improving market conditions."
