There was a monthly decline in the number of searches for purchase and remortgage deals submitted by brokers, data from a software firm showed.
Analysis from Twenty7tec found searches for purchase mortgages fell by 11% from October to November, while there was an 8.6% fall in remortgage search activity.
The purchase market appeared to be busier than a year ago, however, as searches were up 10.4% annually. In contrast, remortgage activity was down by 14%.
Despite the larger decline in activity for purchase mortgages, there was a split of 56% of business for purchases and 44% for remortgage. This data excludes product transfer activity.
Meanwhile, searches for buy-to-let (BTL) deals fell by 14.6% month-on-month, and queries for first-time buyer deals were 9.2% lower.
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Spike in activity for October and November
Although activity fell month-to-month, October and November were collectively the busiest months of this year.
Searches were up by 5.9% on last year and 2.7% on 2022, which was a previous high. The period also set a record for first-time buyer searches, which totalled 508,772 over both months. This was 5.2% higher than last year and 5% up on 2022.
No records were set for remortgage searches, which totalled 1.4 million over both months and were down by 5.8% annually and 4.99% on 2022.
However, a record was set for purchase mortgage searches, which reached 1.8 million. This was 9.5% higher than the previous record year of 2022 and 17.1% up on 2023.
BTL remortgage searches were 4.7% higher than 2023, but 4.5% down on 2022’s record.
BTL purchase searches during October and November resulted in the period being the fourth-busiest ever at 89.1% of the previous record, which was set in 2022.
It was also the busiest year for self-employed mortgages, which exceeded 100,000 for the 11th month in a row and was already nearly 2% higher than last year’s total searches.
Less interest in two-year fixes
Twenty7tec’s data showed a smaller share of searches were for two-year fixes than the same month last year, with this accounting for 40.5% of activity in November this year and 47.5% in 2023.
Demand seemed to shift to longer-term fixed rate deals, as the proportion of searches for 5-10-year fixes rose from 19.5% last year to 23.4% this year.
Interest in medium-term products was relatively stable, making up 33% of searches in November this year compared to 35.5% last year.
There were more products on the market too, with Twenty7tec recording a 1.5% annual rise in deals to a total of 23,830.
A busy year for mortgage searches
Nathan Reilly (pictured), director at Twenty7tec, said: “November mortgage market activity was clearly down in October 2024 pretty much across the board. But there was also a shift in the outlook of the market, as there was a rather large bump (61.3%) in total fixed mortgage searches with initial terms of less than two years. That speaks to what consumers expect to happen next.
“Although activity was down in November, it should be looked at in the broader context: at around midday on 28 November… the year-to-date totals overtook mortgage searches for 2023, with over a month to spare.”
He added: “There’s nuance in those figures, however, as the market this year has not been as busy handling first-time buyer mortgage searches, with volumes still down over 100,000 in 2023 with a month to go.
“But the market has had its busiest ever year for self-employeds with 1,223,140 mortgage searches; it’s already up 1.97% on 2023 with a month to spare. Every single month this year has had over 100,000 self-employed mortgage searches, with 2023 seeing five months of over 100,000 self-employed searches and 2022 having four months. Prior to that, we had no months of over 100,000 self-employed mortgage searches.”
Reilly said: “This year has already overtaken 2023 for the busiest ever year for mortgage searches. The relative October and November slack have been picked up in the first quarter – with particularly strong performances in January, February and March 2024.
“It will be interesting to see if 2025 gets off to as strong a start as 2024 did. The late December interest rate decision would appear to have even more importance for the momentum for the weeks ahead.”
