November saw mortgage search volumes fell by 12.1% compared to the previous month, new data released by Twenty7Tec has revealed.

The mortgage technology provider’s monthly market data for November showed that both purchase and remortgage searches were down compared to October – by 12.6% and 11.2%, respectively. Buy-to-let (BTL) mortgage searches also slipped downwards by 6.9% on October.

The data revealed that searches were down across all valuation ranges, with the least affected group being properties worth more than £1m.

Twenty7Tec suggested that remortgages are also forming a larger part of total searches and were at 34.34% during November, reflecting a large rise from August’s low of 30.92%.
 
“The remortgage market at 34.34% is creeping back up as a proportion of the overall searches, albeit in a contracting search market,” said Twenty7Tec founder and CEO, James Tucker. “The long-term ratio for purchase to remortgage is around 60:40 or 55:45, so there's room for more of a rebalancing yet. Deferred mortgage payments – often called mortgage holidays – have clearly impacted this part of the market.”

Twenty7Tec’s data showed that its ESIS document volumes are currently at 85.6% of the year’s high on a seven-day rolling basis.

The mortgage technology expert said the volume of BTL ESIS documentation is also rising again as a proportion of all documents prepared, and now stands at 22.45% of all documents.
 
“There remains a lack of products in the market, which means that the level of demand is putting pressure on those fewer products and the teams that sit behind them,” Tucker added. “Greater certainty is likely to give confidence to more players to come back with increased ranges of products.

“Unfortunately, the volume of variables involved make it hard to predict when greater certainty is likely to emerge – it could be post-Brexit, it could after the stamp duty holiday period ends, it could be when we get brighter economic forecasts.”

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