Twenty7tec has published its findings based on its mortgage platform data for January 2023.

January 2023 saw more mortgage searches than ever before in a single month – up 6.4% on the previous best-ever month (September 2022). The month was also the busiest ever month for remortgages but only the 13th busiest ever for purchase mortgage searches.

The end of the month saw a huge uptick in self-employed mortgage searches as the self-assessment tax period ended on January 31st.

Meanwhile, this was the fifth month on the trot where we created more ESIS documents for remortgages than for purchases – despite purchase searches outstripping remortgage searches.

Twenty7Tec said 10 of the top 20 ever busiest days for mortgage searches on our platform were in January 2023, while three of the top 10 busiest ever days for first-time buyers on its platform were in the last two weeks of January 2023.

In addition, there was a split in market activity when it came to volumes of mortgage searches based on valuations: in January 2023, Twenty7Tec saw fewer sub £250k searches than in December 2022 but 5.5% more searches for properties valued at over £1m.

The month ended with over 14,988 products and variants available, up 11.4% compared to the end of the prior month.

Product availability gains were mainly in the following maximum LTV bands:

• Total products with a max 60% LTV rose 11.8%
• Total products with a max 80% LTV rose 10.6%
• Total products with a max 85% LTV rose 13.1%
• Total products with a max 90% LTV rose 14.6%

Nathan Reilly, director at Twenty7tec, said: “January 2023 was the start that every adviser would have wanted for 2023: busy and interesting. The Bank of England rate change will, we believe, keep advisers busy over the coming days. February tends to surpass January for performance, but given that this January was our busiest ever for total mortgage searches, it’s hard to predict.

“It will remain important that advisers continue to monitor rate and policy changes given the broader economic circumstances and the sustained regulatory push for best advice is more essential than ever.”