The research discovered a total of £17.6 billion in had been lent in mortgages in October. A 37 per cent rise on last year and a 9 per cent jump on last month.

Duncan Kreeger, Director of West One Loans, the largest privately funded short-term secured lender in the UK, comments, “More mortgages are of course excellent news – but this isn’t the be-all and end-all of the financial world. 

"It’s all very well to make mortgages more available, but if the housing stock isn’t there, prices will remain high and the dream of owning a home will remain a distant one for many.  Alongside an exciting resuscitation of 95% mortgages, we need a similar reawakening of supply in the housing market."
 
David Whittaker, Managing Director of Mortgages for Business, comments:  “October 2008 wasn’t exactly a vintage month – Lehman Brothers had just imploded, the IMF was starting to hoard trillions of dollars in case major western governments started to collapse and the Prime Minister gave a speech about saving the world!  So a return to anywhere near that pre-crisis level of lending is a major accomplishment."

Andrew Montlake, Director of mortgage broker Coreco said: “These latest figures show that mortgage funding is back with a bang. But the best thing of all is that it's looking even better for 2014.”

"We speak to the major lenders each day and many are already shaping up to lend even more next year. There are various new products and tweaks to existing criteria in the pipeline that will enable even more people to borrow."
 
First time buyers stole the show with London agents reporting the amount of those registering this autumn has almost doubled. Loans to borrowers with small deposits had seen an increase of 80 per cent.

The statistics are collated from the performance of the CML's members who account for 95 per cent of the UK's residential mortgage lending market.

CML states there are 11.2 million mortgages in the UK equating to £1.2 trillion.