Twenty7tec has released mortgage market statistics for December 2024, noting that purchase mortgage searches were up 9.58% compared to December 2023.
However, compared to November 2024, and purchase mortgage searches were down 37.7%, remortgage searches fell by 32.9%.
Buy-to-let (BTL) purchase mortgage searches dropped by 35.0%, and BTL remortgage searches decreased by 35.5%.
Meanwhile, residential purchase mortgage searches were down 38.4%, and residential remortgage searches declined by 32.0%.
Searches by first-time buyers were down 36.66%.
When looking at the year-on-year figures, remortgage searches were down 17.42%, BTL purchase mortgage searches saw a slight increase of 0.3%, and BTL remortgage searches fell by 5.95%.
Residential purchase mortgage searches rose by 11.36%, while residential remortgage searches decreased by 21.65%.
Searches by first-time buyers increased by 4.64%.
In December 2024, searches for fixed mortgage products showed some changes; 2-year fixed mortgages made up 41.89% of all fixed product searches, down from 49.65% in December 2023.
Meanwhile, 3-year and 5-year fixed mortgages accounted for 35.48%, an increase from 31.95% the previous year.
5-year to 10-year fixed mortgages represented 22.64%, up from 18.40% in December 2023.
Nathan Reilly, director at Twenty7tec, said: “As expected, December activity slowed even though we had a Bank of England rate decision just before Christmas.
“We’ve seen much of the pent-up demand in prior December’s come into the market in the subsequent January, so we’re hopeful that this period will once again be busy.
“If there had been an interest rate drop in late December, I think we’d be predicting a very busy market for the next few weeks.”
Reilly added: “On the rate decision day – 19 December 2024 – we saw record high number of mortgage products on our systems with 24,264 available.
“There’s been talk in the market of the biggest ever Boxing Day bounce – when people begin to look at new properties, which will result in busier times for advisers over coming weeks.”
He said: “January is also likely to be busy – especially in the second half – with self-employed individuals looking for new mortgages as their tax bills are due January 31st and financial clarity means that more of them make decisions at this time of year about buying, remortgaging or moving home.
“2024 was the busiest ever year on record for self-employed people looking for mortgages on our systems, 7.47% on the prior year.”
