MORTGAGE APPROVALS HAVE reached a record value of €16.7 billion in the last year, despite a decrease in the number of approvals given.

Although mortgages have reached the highest value since records began in 2011, the number of mortgages approved fell 2.5% since last year, according to today’s Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) Mortgage Approvals Report.

4,536 mortgages were approved in August, amounting to a value of €1,456m. Of these approvals, first-time buyers accounted for over 62% and €920 million.

The report suggested that approvals have decreased 17% month-on-month between August 2024 to 20254.

Another notable change is that re-mortgage or switching mortgages has risen by over 13% in volume and over 30% in value in the same period.

Asked about the increasing value of mortgages, Tánaiste Simon Harris said the “fact that supply isn’t where it needs to be is obviously having a direct impact on costs [and] the price of a house, therefore, it is obviously pushing up the amount people are taking out on their mortgage. Obviously nobody wants to see anybody overstretched on their mortgage,” said Harris.

He said “shocks can happen to the economy. We’re living in very turbulent times”, he added.

Harris went on to speak of his support for the Central Bank mortgage lending rules which only allows person borrow four times their gross income.

There are “very rigorous rules around mortgage lending that weren’t in place in previous times”, he said, stating that in recent times there has been “a lot of pressure to revisit those rules, to loosen those rules”.

“I think we’re beginning to see, challenging as they are, the actual importance of them, because if they are loosened, that is a matter for Central Bank, but you do end up with people significantly over leveraged and that can cause problems in the future,” he said. 

‘Slowdown’

Commenting on the publication of the latest data, Brian Hayes, Chief Executive, BPFI said: “Our latest report shows that there were 4,536 mortgage approvals in August with overall values at almost €1.5 billion (€1,456 million).”

“This represented somewhat of a slowdown in mortgage approval activity, with approval volumes down by 2.5%, year on year,” he said.

“This was more pronounced for home purchase mortgage approvals, which fell in volume terms by 5.1% over the same period. However, overall mortgage values continued to rise, up 4.1% compared with August 2024.”

With reporting by Christina Finn in New York