LMS, the UK’s leading conveyancer and panel management specialist, has today released its monthly remortgage snapshot.
This month’s update showed:
- Instructions increased by 9% in February
- 31% less remortgages completed in February
- Pipeline cases decreased by 2% month on month
- The overall cancellation rate increased by 0.35%
- £257 average monthly payment increase for those who remortgaged in February
- 70% of borrowers increased their loan size in February
- 54% of those who remortgaged took out a 5-year fixed rate product, the most popular product in February
- 30% said their main aim when remortgaging was to gain longer term security, the most popular response
Nick Chadbourne, CEO at LMS, comments:
“Instructions continued to rise in February as expected as people looked to lock in rates before they rise again – this is to be expected since we have seen swap rates bottom out, and the majority of borrowers continued to go after 5-year fixed rates in a push for longer term security. Despite this, the pipeline contracted as a result of a simultaneous increase in cancellation rates – this was predictable, though, as people who secured rates in December started cancelling and reapplying for more attractive rates.
Heading into March, we are likely to see an uplift in instructions thanks to the ERC spike expected at the end of the quarter. This will be tempered a little as affordability remains a challenge, and with the Spring Budget doing nothing to help the housing market this will be unlikely to go away anytime soon. What we needed was measures to help people get on the property ladder, with the government taking steps to increase housing stock and therefore improve affordability, and to make the long-term rental market more stable by easing punitive measures on landlords, but we didn’t see any of that.
Hopefully there will be more input in the coming months, but until then we are likely seeing reduced activity overall as people effectively wait and see before making any decisions.”
This article was submitted to be published by LMS as part of their advertising agreement with Today’s Conveyancer. The views expressed in this article are those of the submitter and not those of Today’s Conveyancer.
