Monthly gross remortgage lending increased by £26m in October to £4.73bn, according to LMS.

This is up 0.6% on September’s £4.70bn reported by the Council for Mortgage Lenders (CML) last week, and 27.7% higher than this time last year.

The CML has also reported that total gross mortgage lending rose to £17.6bn in October. As a result, remortgages now represent 27% of the total market.

LMS estimates that the total number of remortgage loans in October decreased by 3.8% to 31,661, compared with 32,900 in September. However, despite this, October’s figure is still 8.8% higher than this time last year (29,100).

The average remortgage loan amount has also dropped slightly (by 1.4%) over the past month and now stands at £149,282. But this figure is also 8.0% higher than this time last year.

Andy Knee, chief executive of LMS, said: “While the growth in the value of remortgaging has slowed over the past month, it remains at a very high level compared with a year ago.

“Remortgage lending is up by nearly 30% compared to this time last year, and remortgage customers are releasing more than £8,000 more cash than they were in January.

“According to a recent LMS survey approximately 18% of the £21,579 average equity released last month will go into home improvements, 11% on the repayment of debt and the remaining 71% will finance extra spending, most probably ahead of Christmas.

“There are some fantastic deals to be had at the moment. In fact, our latest customer survey showed that 39% were able to reduce their monthly repayments, some by as much as £500.

“We are likely to see this buoyancy in the market continue over the coming months as lenders try to feed transactions through the pipeline ahead of the implementation of the MMR in April. While harsh weather may temper the growth in the house purchase market, remortgage activity in the coming winter months is likely to prove much more resilient.”