Borrowers with tracker or variable-rate mortgages have benefited from a 17 per cent fall in the cost of owning a home in the past year, but everyone else has less cause to cheer. For them, it has risen by 4.5 per cent.

The cost of running the average household fell from £8,766 to £7,298 in the 12 months to April, according to Halifax, affecting 6.3 million homeowners. However, tenants, or the estimated 4.8 million borrowers on fixed-rate deals, will have noticed rises in the cost of every household expense except for mortgage interest repayments.

Energy costs rose by 13 per cent; water by 5 per cent, council tax and domestic rates by 3 per cent and the cost of repair work by 5 per cent. Even household appliances such as kettles and toasters increased in price by 5 per cent, the research showed. However, for borrowers whose mortgage repayments have fallen, these fairly significant rises were not enough to offset the 47 per cent they have saved on interest repayments — the result of successive base rate cuts by the Bank of England, when calculating the average cost of housing.

The average mortgage rate fell to 3.62 per cent in April this year from 5.8 per cent a year earlier, Halifax said. In London, annual household costs fell by 21 per cent, from £11,571 to £9,180. Mortgage interest payments make up a quarter of the average household’s outgoings, with fuel bills accounting for 19 per cent, up from 14 per cent last year, and council tax and domestic rates taking up 17 per cent, up from 14 per cent in April 2008.

Suren Thiru, economist at Halifax, said: “Such a sizeable drop in the costs of running a home will help to ease the pressure on household disposable income, providing some welcome relief to homeowners.

“Those living in London saw the biggest fall in housing costs over the past year, although the average annual expense of running a home in the capital remains higher than elsewhere.”

Debt charities were unmoved by Halifax’s study. Chris Tapp, director at Credit Action, said: “For a lot of people, things are still very tight and for significant numbers, life has become more, not less expensive. For those who don’t have mortgages, as well as borrowers on relatively high fixed rates or SVRs, this does not mean an awful lot, and it doesn’t take account of higher pressure on incomes from pay cuts or unemployment.”

The findings came alongside some upbeat sales figures from John Lewis, which it interpreted as evidence that shoppers were beginning to revert to “pre-recession behaviour”.

In a sign that consumers have started to feel the effects of extra disposable income, John Lewis said that 27 department stores last week recorded their best performance of the first half, with sales increasing by 2.2 per cent to £46.5 million.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders this week reduced the number of households that it expects to be repossessed this year from 75,000 to 65,000.

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