In our own market place, overall mortgage enquiries again hovered around the 30,000 mark in March but with a noticeable shift in the mixture of enquiry types.
Remortgage enquiries were again the biggest category, but dropped as a proportion of total mortgage leads to just over 51% of leads submitted. First-time buyer enquiries jumped to over 25% of all enquiries, while next-time buyers remained steady at around 17% of leads. Buy-to-let leads again brought up the rear with around 6% of mortgage enquiries.
Focusing on regional variations in remortgage enquiries, there were some interesting trends around the UK.
To put the findings into context, across the UK, the average LTV for March was 58% with an average loan value of £131,800. Across all remortgage enquiries, 73% were from prime consumers, with 11.9% sub prime and a further 15.1% looking to self-certify their incomes. The average age of applicants was 42, which was fairly constant across the UK.
Like many lead providers, we group the 124 postal areas into 13 separate regions – Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, North East, North West, Midlands, East Anglia, Home Counties, London, South, South West, Channel Islands and Isle of Man.
In terms of lead volumes, the most popular areas were the Home Counties with just under 21% of all remortgage enquiries. Next was the North West with just under 17% of enquiries, followed by the Midlands with 13.5% and then the South West with 11% of enquires. No other region had a share greater than 10%.
Looking at average loan values across the UK, unsurprisingly the area with the highest loan value was London with an average loan size of £191,900.
The next highest was the Home Counties with an average loan size of £161,300 followed by the South with £146,600. The region with the lowest loan values was the North East with average loan values of £104,000.
Analysing consumer credit grades across the UK, the highest number of prime consumers as a proportion of leads was Northern Ireland with 79% of all remortgage enquiries from prime consumers. This was followed by East Anglia with just under 76% and then the North East with 74.5%.
The area with the most sub prime customers was the Midlands, followed by the North West and then Scotland.
Justin Rees is director of marketing and partnerships at LeadPoint
