Mortgage lending in January hit its highest level in almost a decade, according to property website Zoopla.

Borrowers took out a massive £18.9bn of mortgage deals in January – the highest total for the month since 2008.

But while lending was two per cent higher than it had been in January 2016, it was six per cent lower than December’s total of £20bn.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said that a two-speed mortgage market had developed, with weakness in lending to buy-to-let investors and home movers being offset by an increase in home loans to first-time buyers and those remortgaging.

Record low interest rates are encouraging existing homeowners to remortgage, and also helping to keep property affordable for first-time buyers, despite recent strong house price gains.

But the shortage of homes for sale is continuing to thwart potential buyers who want to move up or down the property ladder, accounting for the low level of lending to this group.

Meanwhile, the combination of tax changes for property investors, including April’s three per cent stamp duty hike and tougher affordability criteria for buy-to-let lending has led to a steep fall in loans to landlords.

The shortage of homes for sale is bad news for people at all points of the property market.

If existing homeowners can’t find a property to trade up to, they will not be able to free up homes for first-time buyers.

At the same time, a shortage of suitable retirement properties is preventing people at the top of the ladder from trading down.

CML economist Mohammad Jamei said: “A continuing acute shortage of homes being offered for sale is one aspect of a broken housing market that looks unlikely to resolve in the near term.”

Earlier this month, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) warned the housing market faced a “huge challenge” as the number of homes on the market remained close to record lows.

At the heart of the property shortage is the fact that too few homes are being built each year to keep pace with rising demand.

It is estimated that the country needs around 250,000 new properties to be built each year to keep up with demand.

But figures released by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) show that construction was finished on only 140,660 new-build homes in 2016, one per cent fewer than in 2015.

The Government has introduced a number of measures to try to help house builders increase the number of homes they build, including speeding up the planning permission system.