Mortgage switching doubling year on year as approvals rise in May

Kenneth Fox

Mortgage switching is at its highest level in a decade as overall the trend is more than doubling year-on-year.

It comes as Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) published the latest figures from the BPFI Mortgage Approvals Report for May 2022.

A total of 5,355 mortgages were approved in May 2022 – first-time buyers (FTBs) were approved for 2,640 mortgages (49.3 per cent of total volume) while mover purchasers accounted for 1,082 (20.2 per cent).

The number of mortgages approved rose by 24.4 per cent month-on-month and by 14.3 per cent compared with the same period last year.

Mortgages approved in May 2022 were valued at €1,453 million – of which FTBs accounted for €732 million (50.4 per cent) and mover purchasers for €346 million (23.8 per cent).

The value of mortgage approvals rose by 24.8 per cent month-on-month and by 25.3 per cent year-on-year.

Re-mortgage/switching grew by 111.5 per cent to 1,237 in volume terms year-on-year and by 129.3 per crnt year-on-year to €329 million over the same period.

Speaking about the data, Brian Hayes the chief executive of BPFI said: “Our latest mortgage approvals data shows continued growth in mortgage approval activity in May, and it’s clear that switching activity has grown sharply in recent months.

"During the month of May switching volumes and values more than doubled in year-on-year terms with switching levels at their highest ever recorded since BPFI began collecting this data in 2011.

“FTBs still accounted for about half of mortgage approvals both in volume and value terms, these latest June figures are notably dominated by mortgage switching activity and May was one of the strongest performances recorded for FTB approvals."