Total mortgage searches increased by 7.96% in 2024, Twenty7Tec mortgage market data reveals.
Twenty7tec’s data found that the first time buyer market set records in real terms for total searches. These totalled 17.687m and were up 5.02% on the prior year.
It also shows a new annual high for self employed mortgage searches which are up 7.47% year on year.
Meanwhile, green mortgage searches were also up 100.73% compared to 2023. Buy-to-let (BTL) green mortgages were up 67.41% year on year whereas purchase green mortgages were up 111.62%.
It was the busiest ever year for purchase mortgage searches, increasing by 13.86% on the prior year and up 8.07% on the previous record year for purchase searches, which was in 2022.
Remortgage searches matched purchases and were up 5.82% on the prior year.
In 2024, purchase mortgage searches represented 53.95% of all searches on the platform and remortgages represented 46.05%. That’s at the higher end of the purchase versus remortgages ratio, with remortgages representing between 36% and 48% of all mortgage searches over the past few years.
Data also found that BTL purchase mortgage searches were up 6.54% from 2023, while BTL remortgage searches were up 4.23%.
However, in the BTL market, the proportion of searches for purchase came in at 36.31% which is at the lower end of recent year’s expectations, with remortgaging dominating the balance of searches at 63.69%.
Twenty7tec says this has been a new high, in a record year for total BTL mortgage searches on its platform.
Data also showed that residential purchase searches set a new high, increasing 16.05% year on year. Residential remortgage searches also set a new benchmark, rising by 8.10% year on year.
Meanwhile, there were 21,964 product variants available on an average day in 2024, which is up 34.54% from 2023.
On 19 December 2024 a new record was set for total products available with 24,264. In addition, December 2024 saw both highest products available on a daily average with 24,029 and most at month end with 24,064 products.
Twenty7tec director Nathan Reilly says: “We’ve seen an increased number of total mortgage searches again year on year. But the picture is nuanced. The increases overall mask a drop off in remortgage searches and a large rise in residential purchase searches.”
“In 2020, mortgage rates were historically low, driven by central banks slashing interest rates to support economies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fixed-rate mortgages were particularly popular as borrowers sought to lock in these favorable rates amidst economic uncertainty.”
“However, we can see that advisers explored multiple options and scenarios, comparing rates for fixed and variable mortgages as they tried to help their customers to navigate a rapidly changing financial landscape. This contributed to a higher average number of searches per person during that time.”
“Interestingly, whilst 2020 was the hot year for fixed rate mortgages, last year this figure dropped with one in seven people opting for a different type of product.”