The figure represents a rise of four per cent month-on-month and a dramatic 21 per cent increase from April last year.

But CML points out that comparisons with last year are difficult to make, since April 2012 saw a sharp decline in house-buying activity following the end of the government’s stamp duty holiday.

House purchases spiked just before the deadline as home-buyers rushed through the process to save on tax.

Even accounting for this, CML maintains that April was probably still one of the strongest figures for borrowing since 2008 and the underlying trend still points to a resilient market.

House purchase approvals reached 54,000 in March, according to the Market Commentary – the strongest March since 2008 and seventh month in a row when approvals have stayed above the 50,000 mark.

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The average price of a UK house is now £235,000, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), up from the annual rise of 1.9 per cent recorded in February.

Growth remains relatively stable across most of the UK, although properties in London have become 7.6 per cent more expensive. The south-east is enjoying some of London’s halo effect too – house prices rose by 3.3 per cent, much less than in the capital but still above average.

In contrast, house prices are falling in Northern Ireland, with a two per cent reduction over the twelve months to March. Scottish homes also became cheaper by 1.7 per cent.

As a result, it is unsurprising that the average price of a house varies widely across regions. In London, buyers are typically spending £398,000 on their homes, while a house in Northern Ireland costs less than a third of that amount at just £130,000.

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Paragon Mortgages’ quarterly trend survey shows that intermediary buy-to-let business coming from first-time landlords has been on the rise since 2009.

Over the first quarter of this year, 22 per cent of the buy-to-let business enjoyed by intermediaries has come from new landlords.

The figure peaked in 2002, at the height of the buy-to-let boom, but in 2008 the financial crisis dragged demand from first-time landlords down to its lowest level. Business has been growing steadily since mid-2009, but reached a peak in the third quarter of last year.

John Heron, director of mortgages at Paragon, says that the buy-to-let market is shifting away from professional landlords, who are struggling to access finance or release equity. In contrast, professional investors tend to hold other assets and can release finance more easily.

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Throughout England and Wales, the average rental property price rose by 0.2 per cent to £736 per month compared to March, according to the Buy-to-Let Index from LSL Property Services.

The level was the highest since last November, representing a rise of 3.9 per cent from April last year.

Compared to the same month last year, every region reported a rise in rental prices – the first time this has happened in nearly two years.

London reported the largest annual increase of 7.6 per cent, while the south-west reversed losses in March to record a modest rise of 0.5 per cent.

Eight out of the ten regions also posted month-on-month improvements. The East Midlands performed particularly strongly with a rise of 0.6 per cent, while the north-east and south-west followed closely behind.

Wales and the north-west were the only two regions where rental prices fell, with drops of 0.3 and 0.2 per cent respectively.

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The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) today announced that it will continue to test the system, which sees housing benefit payments made directly to tenants rather than landlords, until the end of the year.

Recent findings from the projects have seen rent collection rates increase to 94 per cent, according to DWP, with payment rates anywhere between 91 and 97 per cent.

Minister for welfare reform Lord Freud said that they were extending the projects so they could develop ways to protect tenants and landlords when renters fall into arrears.

The six pilot projects based in Edinburgh, Oxford, Southwark, Torfaen County in Wales, Shropshire and Wakefield, West Yorkshire were all launched last summer. DWP says that 6,168 tenants are receiving direct payments, between whom a total of £19,204,022 had been charged in rent so far.

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Property specialists Moore Blatch have said that the challenges faced by employers dealing with similar rules are likely to affect landlords as well.

Under the bill set out in the Queen’s Speech last week, landlords will be expected to check the immigration status of renters to make sure that all of their tenants are in the country legally.

But Moore Blatch says that in the four years after employers became legally obliged to do the same, the UK Border Agency imposed £65 million in penalties across 7,000 different notifications of liability.

Employment law states that companies can be prosecuted and face fines of up to £10,000 if they are found to have staff working for them illegally.

Paul Walshe, head of Moore Blatch’s online service Property Reclaim, said that he would advise landlords to begin preparing now for the bill, which would add another layer to the administrative burden that they already face.

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The homeless charity is in the early stages of research into the effects of so-called “rogue landlords” on families and especially children.

But RLA has called on Shelter to “call a spade a spade” and refer to its targets as “criminal landlords” who need to be taken out of the rental sector completely, rather than all landlords being hit with further regulations.

Alan Ward, RLA chairman, says that while the association is still concerned about criminals leaving families in sub-standard accommodation, campaigns such as Shelter’s largely ignore the vast majority of tenants who are satisfied with their private rentals.

He added that more than eight out of ten private renters were happy with their accommodation in the 2010-11 English Housing Survey – a higher proportion than among social housing tenants.

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Speaking in a House of Commons debate, shadow home secretary and former housing minister Yvette Cooper said that the scheme was not workable because the government will not have a statutory register of landlords.

Labour MP for Slough Fiona McTaggart agreed, adding that the scheme was impractical because most immigration papers “are stuck in the Home Office”.

Julian Huppert, Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge, said that he “could live with” a simple process whereby landlords might check a passport number against a register, but that he would not favour a system which required landlords to become “experts in immigration law”.

The Residential Landlords Association has already heavily criticised the proposals, arguing that letting agents would be likely to pass on the cost of the additional checks to tenants.

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Although the LSL/Acadametrics House Price Index showed a rise of just 0.3 per cent or £707 month-on-month, an increase of £6,726 over the past year took the average house price up to £231,170.

Sales were also up by 18 per cent compared to April 2012, on the back of what LSL director David Newnes called a “significantly improved” mortgage market.

But sharp rises in London pulled up the national average. Excluding the capital, house prices only rose by 1.1 per cent. An increase in the number of properties being sold for seven-figure sums in prime locations is thought to be behind this distorting effect.

Eight out of ten regions saw house prices rise, although Wales and the north-east saw prices drop by 1.1 and 1.3 per cent respectively.

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Figures published by the organisation yesterday showed that gross mortgage lending for buy-to-let landlords stood at £4.2 billion across 33,500 loans.

Although this was lower than the £4.6 billion recorded in the previous quarter, it was also much higher than the £3.7 billion loaned in the same quarter last year.

Almost half of the total was dedicated to remortgaging rather than buying new property, but CML says that the purchases of new homes show that the buy-to-let market is still expanding.

Currently buy-to-let loans comprise 13 per cent of the UK’s 11.26 million mortgages. By the end of March, they also accounted for 13.4 per cent of total mortgage lending.

Paul Smee, director general of CML, said that lenders were looking into ways they could cater to future demand from landlords looking to offer longer leases to their tenants.

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