mortgage bank Northern Rock has been boosted by the strong housing market.

The Newcastle-based bank said yesterday its range of competitive mortgages and the buoyant housing market resulted in a "very strong" trading performance in the first quarter of the current year.

The former building society said net lending for the three months to the end of March soared by 25 per cent on the same period the previous year, with new applications for residential loans increasing by more than 24 per cent.

A spokesman for Northern Rock said the bank's "competitive products" helped it almost double its share of the mortgage market to six per cent compared to 3.2 per cent the previous year.

Speaking at the bank's annual general meeting held yesterday, chief executive Adam Applegarth said: "The Northern Rock is performing well and is set to continue to deliver its low cost, good quality, high growth strategy.

"We remain comfortable with analysts' expectations of Northern Rock for the current year."

The group, whose products include a "Together mortgage" - which combines a mortgage, unsecured loan and credit card - revealed it had £2.2bn of loan applications in the pipeline, with commercial and personal loans also performing well.

It also said its Internet operation, which offers the same products as the bank's other outlets, was contributing "significantly and efficiently to the trading performance".

Last month the group raised more than £1.5bn through its fourth securitisation transaction, under which investors bought a chunk of the Northern Rock's future income from mortgage repayments.