Twenty7tec has unveiled the latest statistics for the UK mortgage market in November 2024, revealing notable shifts in activity across various sectors.
Comparing November to October 2024, the data highlights a seasonal slowdown. Purchase mortgage searches dropped by 11.1%, while remortgage searches fell by 8.6%. Buy-to-let activity also declined, with purchase mortgage searches down 14.6% and remortgage searches decreasing by 6.5%.
Residential purchase and remortgage searches experienced similar trends, falling by 11.3% and 8.6% respectively. First-time buyer searches also saw a 9.2% reduction month-on-month.
Looking at year-on-year figures, however, a different picture emerges. Purchase mortgage searches in November 2024 increased by 10.39% compared to the same period in 2023, while residential purchase mortgage searches rose by an impressive 12.36%. Buy-to-let purchase activity remained stable, with a modest 0.04% increase.
On the other hand, remortgage searches showed a sharper decline, with residential remortgages down 18.42% and overall remortgage activity decreasing by 14.05%. First-time buyer searches edged up slightly, recording a 0.45% year-on-year increase.
PRODUCT POPULARITY
Interest in fixed-rate mortgage products also reflected changing borrower preferences. Two-year fixed products accounted for 40.51% of fixed product searches, down from 47.54% in November 2023. Longer-term fixes saw increased demand, with three- to five-year products capturing 35.51% of searches (up from 32.91%) and five- to 10-year products rising to 23.45%, compared to 19.55% a year ago.
October and November 2024 marked the busiest period ever for mortgage searches, surpassing previous records. Overall mortgage searches during these months were up by 5.87% compared to 2023 and 2.7% higher than the previous high in 2022. Purchase mortgages set a new record, with 1,826,590 searches—up 17.1% on 2023 and 9.5% higher than the previous record year, 2022.
BUY-TO-LET
Buy-to-let performance varied during this period. While purchase searches for buy-to-let mortgages reached 89.1% of the record set in 2022, buy-to-let remortgage searches increased by 4.7% on 2023 but remained 4.55% below the 2022 peak.
First-time buyer activity also hit new heights. With 508,772 searches recorded during October and November, this segment achieved a 5.24% increase compared to 2023 and a 5.06% rise over 2022 figures.
Nathan Reilly, director at Twenty7tec, said: “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 100k self-employed searches and 2022 having four months. Prior to that, we had no months of over 100k 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.”
