"At around midday on November 28th, the year-to-date totals overtook mortgage searches for 2023, with over a month to spare. "
- Nathan Reilly, director at Twenty7tec
2024 has seen the busiest ever October and November for mortgage searches - up on 2023 by 5.87% and up 2.70% on the previous record year, 2022, according to data from Twenty7tec.
As a result, 2024 has already overtaken 2023 for the busiest-ever year for mortgage searches.
Purchase mortgages set a new record, up 9.5% on the prior record year and up 17.1% compared to 2023, and the period in 2024 set new records for first-time buyer purchases - up 5.24% on 2023 and 5.06% on 2022.
Remortgages in October and November, however, did not set a record. 2024’s figures were down 5.84% on 2023 and 4.99% compared to 2022.
Buy-to-let purchase searches in this period in 2024 was only the fourth-ever busiest year - at 89.1% of the prior record, set in 2022.
November searches down on October but up year-on-year
Compared to October, purchase mortgage searches were down 11.1% and remortgage searches were down 8.6%.
Broken down, residential purchase mortgage searches were down 11.3%, remortgage searches were down 8.6%, and first-time buyer searches fell 9.2%.
Buy-to-let purchase mortgage searches were down 14.60% and remortgage searches were down 6.5%.
However, compared to November 2023, November purchase mortgage searches were up 10.39% and remortgage searches were down 14.05%.
Residential purchase searches rose 12.36% and first-time buyer searches were up 0.45%, but remortgage searches fell 18.42%.
Buy-to-let purchase searches were up 0.04% and remortgage searches were down 0.01%.
Nathan Reilly, director at Twenty7tec, commented: “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.
“Although activity was down in November, it should be looked at in the broader context: at around midday on November 28th, the year-to-date totals overtook mortgage searches for 2023, with over a month to spare. There’s nuance in those figures, however, as the market this year has not been as busy handling first-time buyer mortgage searches with volumes still down over 100,000 in 2023 with a month to go.
“But the market has had its busiest ever year for self-employeds - with 1,223,140 mortgage searches it’s already up 1.97% on 2023 with a month to spare. Every single month this year has had over 100,000 self employed mortgage searches, with 2023 seeing five months of over 100,000 self-employed searches and 2022 having four months. Prior to that, we had no months of over 100,000 self-employed mortgage searches.
“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.
“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.”
