New analysis has led to claims that September was the “second-busiest month ever” for total mortgage searches – behind March 2022.
Twenty7Tec made the claim based on the data retrieved from their mortgage platform, with founder and CEO James Tucker saying it’s “hard to explain the magnitude” of the activity seen last month.
The key findings of their report are as follows.
Mortgage searches
- September 2022 was the second-busiest month ever for total mortgage searches – just behind March 2022.
- The last week of September 2022 was the busiest week ever for mortgage searches.
- 27th September 2022 was the single busiest day for mortgage searches ever – over 100,000 searches took place on our platform that day alone.
- The month’s searches for fixed mortgages were at 95.94% of their all-time high.
- Green mortgages were busy too – with four of the top six days ever on a seven-day rolling basis in September 2022.
ESIS documents
- The four busiest ever days for producing ESIS docs were the last four days in September 2022.
- Eight of the 10 busiest days ever for remortgage ESIS docs were in September 2022.
Purchase v remortgage
- The month ended 51:49 for purchase v remortgages but the first half of the month was 55:45 purchase and the second half was 55:45 remortgage.
Products
- The month ended with the lowest number of products available since we began reporting – including the pandemic period when lenders scaled back their product volumes.
Audiences
- First-time buyers formed the lowest proportion of the market since the end of the first Covid lockdown in the UK.
- The highest growth for mortgage searches by property valuation was in the £1m+ market where we saw 18.73% more mortgage searches than in the prior month.
- September 2022 saw the five busiest ever days for mortgage searches by the self-employed.
- The two busiest days ever for mortgage searches by retireds were in the last week of September 2022.
- The end of September also set a new record for the average combined salaries for mortgage hunters: £71,487 on Friday 30th September.
James Tucker said:
“The first half of the month was busy, but the second half was far busier as the market reacted to the mini-Budget and withdrew products just as demand sky-rocketed in light of the stamp duty changes and the need for more searches because of the daily changes in product availability.
One thing is clear to me: the market coped admirably well at the volume of change and demonstrated the kind of fortitude that got us through prior challenges so well.”
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