Hundreds of thousands of interest-only mortgage borrowers whose deals mature before 2020 are likely to face a funding shortfall, according to estimates produced for the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
The embattled Bank of Ireland (BoI) has come under fresh attack for "unfairly" hiking the interest rates of thousands of borrowers on ‘tracker' mortgages, despite a static base rate.
Lenders approved 5% more mortgages in March than the previous month to reach a monthly total of £7,646m in loans, according to British Bankers' Association figures.
House prices in England and Wales rose by 0.3% in March, the largest month-on-month increase since March 2010, figures suggest.
The Association of Mortgage Intermediaries (AMI) said it expects advisers' share of the mortgage market to increase markedly this year as a raft of changes boost their prospects.
Accord Mortgages has launched a ten-day sale on six of its mortgage products.
Burgeoning demand for top-end houses created more than 47,000 new property millionaires in the UK in 2012, taking the total number to 300,142, according to property website Zoopla.co.uk.