‘Covid-19 Mortgage Payment Holidays’ was the most searched term in Knowledge Bank’s residential mortgages category during March, and the second most in the buy-to-let (BTL) category, new data has revealed.

The criteria search specialist noted that since 18 March, when Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, announced a payment holiday for all homeowners in financial difficulty, the recorded searches had reflected brokers’ concerns amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
  
Other than searches related to Covid-19, Knowledge Bank also described its latest data for residential mortgage searches as “remarkably business as usual”, with ‘Maximum Age at End of Term’, ‘Interest Only’ and the ‘Self Employed with One Year’s Accounts’ making up four of the top five search terms. 
 
The announcement that landlords may also take a three-month payment holiday if their tenants experience financial difficulties was announced on 20 March, two days after the homeowner announcement, and Knowledge Bank suggested the difference could account for the fact that ‘Covid-19 Mortgage Payment Holidays’ for BTL only reached the second most searched for term. 

‘Lending to Limited Companies’ remained the most popular term for the third month running in this category, followed by ‘First Time Landlord’ and the ‘Requirement to be a Homeowner’.
  
In equity release, all the criteria were completely different again, leading with a top search for 'Early Repayment Charges’ followed by ‘Partial Repayments’ for the first time. The search expert suggested the fluctuations in this category were the result of fewer brokers searching for equity release.

Knowledge Bank Founder and CEO, Nicola Firth, commented: “With the number of lender criteria changes increasing by the day there has never been a more important time to have subscription to a criteria search engine.
 
“As the UK’s largest and most comprehensive mortgage criteria search system, the industry looks to us to provide up-to-date and accurate information on lending policy. At this time of change it is important to reflect the issues and the searches that brokers are carrying out as it reflects on the market as a whole.

“The number of broker registrations and searches has increased exponentially over the past three weeks and a peek into those searches provides us with a fascinating insight. April will clearly be even more revealing as the broker searches could change more dramatically than anything we have seen to date.”

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