Mortgage approvals drop by more than 10% during January

Chief executive of the BPFI Brian Hayes said it was 'worth noting that approvals activity tends to be weakest between December and February'.

Mortgage approvals last month slumped by more than 10% compared to the same period in 2025, with mover-purchaser mortgages seeing the largest drop off, new data from the Banking and Payments Federation, Ireland (BPFI) shows.

In total 3,034 mortgages were approved in January, of which first-time buyers accounted for 1,800, a decline of 7.2% year-on-year, and mover-purchasers accounted for 565, a 23.3% drop.