Purchase mortgage searches were down 11.1% in November, according to the latest data from Twenty7tec.
As part of its Monthly Mortgage Report, the adviser tech firm found that remortgage searches fell by 8.6%, while buy-to-let (BTL) purchase mortgage searches were down 14.60%.
Meanwhile, buy-to-let remortgage searches were down 6.5%, along with residential purchase mortgage searches which were down 11.3%, and residential remortgage searches, which were down 8.6%.
Overall searches by first-time buyers also fell by 9.2% on a monthly basis.
However, despite these falls, the data revealed that 2024 saw the busiest ever October and November for mortgage searches – up on 2023 by 5.87% and up 2.70% on the previous record year in 2022.
Remortgages in October and November (1,401,748 searches in total), however, did not set a record.
2024’s figures were down 5.84% on 2023, and down 4.99% compared to 2022
Purchase mortgages (1,826,590 searches) did set a new record, up 9.5% on the prior record year, 2022 and up 17.1% compared to 2023.
Buy-to-let purchase in this period in 2024 was only our fourth-ever busiest year – at 89.1% of the prior record, set in 2022
At the same time, buy-to-let remortgage searches were up 4.70% compared to 2023, but down -4.55% on 2022’s record.
This period in 2024 also set new records for first-time buyer purchases with 508,772 – up 5.24% on 2023 and up 5.06% on 2022.
Nathan Reilly, 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.”
He added: “In this month’s edition of the Monthly Mortgage Market Report, we have run some statistics on the totals for October and November, which for years were the busiest months of the year for mortgage searches.
“But our findings show that the percentage of annual mortgage searches which take place at this time of year has dropped from 21.71% in 2019 to 16.28% in 2023 and a predicted 16.42% in 2024.
“Over the past three months, we have seen a 29% uplift in the use of our APPLY system, which allows consumers to apply for a mortgage direct from within the Twenty7tec platform. This is compared to a market increase of 14% based on ESIS.”
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.”
