On a month-on-month basis mortgage approvals increased both in terms of value and volume.
The number of mortgages approved for house purchases increased to 38,228, the highest since 2009, from 37,428 a month ago.
The value of mortgages for house purchase rose to £6bn in August from £5.8bn in July.
The BBA attributed the growth to government schemes such as Help to Buy which it said had helped kick-start the housing market by assisting first-time buyers and speeding up housing chains.
Jeremy Duncombe, director, Legal & General Mortgage Club, said: “Clearly confidence continues to grow in the mortgage market.
“Lenders are showing a greater willingness to lend and many ‘appropriate’ borrowers that may have found themselves frozen out are now finding they have access to funding.
“It seems that much of this business is being channelled through intermediaries too with latest CML figures showing advisers accounted for 57.5% of all mortgage transactions in the UK in Q2 2013, up from 53.5% in Q1.
“Clearly this is a good start but greater innovation from lenders when it comes to products is still needed to build a new sustainable and stable market place.”
The BBA data also revealed that the outstanding level of unsecured borrowing grew by 0.3% over the year.
Within this annual growth in credit card borrowing of 6.7% outweighed personal loans and overdraft borrowing of 5.1%.
