The CBI distributive trades survey results were released yesterday and came in better than expected. Of all retailers surveyed, +23% said sales were up from the same period a year ago. While that is down from +29% in August, it is significantly above the +16% economists had expected. It is clear that recent healthy sales are continuing, although a word of caution was sounded for the coming months. It is possible we could see a significant drop off from recent months, especially with consumers beginning to feel the pinch of higher inflation.
UK finance mortgage approvals for August showed that banks approved 39,402 mortgages for new house purchases, which is down by 4.2% from a year ago. The figure had been expected to come in at 39,700 but it wasn’t too far away. For those of you who are interested, the highest-ever figure in a month was 93,541 in March 2002, while the lowest was 17,122 in November 2008.
On the schedule today we have the Nationwide housing prices for September, as well as speeches from the Bank of England’s Andy Haldane and Mark Carney. On a monthly basis, house prices are expected to jump to 0.2% from -0.5% and on an annual basis, dip to 1.9% from 2% in the same month the previous year.
