By Charlotte Beugge

Just when homebuyers might have thought things were getting easier, the Bank of England says that actually, it is going to become harder to get a mortgage over the next few months.

According to the Bank's quarterly survey of lending activity, lenders are going to be even fussier about prospective customers. It says that a tightening of credit scoring will affect the provision of mortgages, thanks to worries about the economy and falling house prices.

This will probably mean that the availability of high loan-to-value mortgages typically taken by first-time buyers decreases.

The report says: "Factors such as the cost and availability of funds, the economic outlook and expectations for house prices were all expected to pull down on credit availability.

"Lenders expected the proportion of total loan applications being approved to fall over the coming quarter with some lenders commenting that they had revised down expectations for households' disposable incomes and hence the affordability of taking out new secured loans."

Lenders told the Bank that any increase in mortgage lending in the next few months would be concentrated on borrowers being able to put down large deposits.

This mortgage rationing was already showing in Bank of England figures from earlier in the week which showed that the number of new loans approved has hardly changed over the past few months.

While buy-to-let lending rose in the fourth quarter of the year, lenders said that they expected demand for lending to landlords to fall as well over the next few months.