Twenty7Tec has revealed that mortgage searches were at just under 80% of the year’s high on a seven-day rolling period last week.

The mortgage technology expert suggested that in previous years, this week is often “among the busiest” for mortgage searches.
 
Twenty7Tec’s latest data, for the final week of the second national lockdown, showed that buy-to-let (BTL) searches also dropped to 89.18% of the yearly high – which was down 5.3% on last week’s figure. Residential searches were at 77.95% of the year’s high on a seven-day basis.
 
“Although residential searches will have felt a lot quieter in recent days, the levels have only now just dipped below those of the spring peaks – which we hit a week before the first lockdown began,” said Twenty7Tec CEO and founder, James Tucker.

“The market has been operating at incredibly high levels for months now, but we believe that we are  likely to see the usual pre-Christmas ebb over coming days.

“That said, 1 December ranked as the twentieth busiest day for BTL mortgage searches all year as buyers were clearly looking to beat the stamp duty deadline. Their slightly later deadline to benefit from the stamp duty holiday is down to BTL mortgages being slightly quicker to process than residential mortgages.”

Twenty7Tec’s figures showed that its overall ESIS document numbers were down 6% on the previous week at 83.68% of the year’s seven-day high.

The data also revealed that BTL ESIS documents were at 87.83% of the year’s seven-day high – which from the previous week was down by 6.3%. Residential ESIS documents were at 81.00% of the year’s seven-day high, a figure that was down by 5.9% on the previous week.

Tucker added: “BTL searches formed 20.45% of all searches and 22.31% of all ESIS documents prepared in week four of lockdown, down 2.9% and 0.9%, respectively.

“Documents fare a little better than searches this week, but the picture is still one of less activity than we might expect at this time of year. That’s due to a combination of factors, including broader economic uncertainty and the end of the stamp duty holiday having propped prior weeks’ activity.”

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