Mortgage searches increased by 7.96% year-on-year in 2024, fuelled by a large rise in residential purchases, a technology firm says.
According to annual figures from Twenty7tec, searches for product types came to an average of 1.7, which is a decrease from 2.6 in 2020.
Residential purchase searches increased 16.05% year-on-year and residential remortgage searches jumped 8.1%, both setting new benchmarks.
Purchase mortgage searches jumped up 13.86% on the prior year, the busiest ever year for purchase mortgage searches.
Remortgage searches went up 5.82% on the previous year, also the busiest year for remortgage searches.
Purchase mortgage searches accounted for 53.85% of all searches on the platform and remortgage searches made up 46.05%. The firm said that this was at the “higher end” of the purchase versus remortgage ratio.
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Buy-to-let (BTL) purchase mortgage searches were up 6.54% and BTL remortgage searches rose 4.23% in 2024 compared to 2023.
First-time buyer searches came to 17.6 million, up 5.02% on the prior year, and self-employed mortgage searches rose 7.47% compared to 2023. This was a record year and the first year that self-employed mortgage searches reached over one million.
Green mortgage searches also doubled compared to 2023.
Looking at product availability, on an average 2024 day, there were 21,964 product variants available. This is up 34.54% on daily availability.
The high of the year came on 19 December, which had 24,264 products.
Nathan Reilly, director at Twenty7tec, said: “We’ve seen an increased number of total mortgage searches again year-on-year. But the picture is nuanced. The increases overall mask a drop-off in remortgage searches and a large rise in residential purchase searches.
“In 2020, mortgage rates were historically low, driven by central banks slashing interest rates to support economies during the Covid-19 pandemic. Fixed rate mortgages were particularly popular as borrowers sought to lock in these favourable rates amidst economic uncertainty. However, we can see that advisers explored multiple options and scenarios, comparing rates for fixed and variable mortgages as they tried to help their customers to navigate a rapidly changing financial landscape. This contributed to a higher average number of searches per person during that time.”
“Interestingly, whilst 2020 was the hot year for fixed rate mortgages, last year this figure dropped, with one in seven people opting for a different type of product.”
