The month recorded the highest number of total searches on record, coming to 1.43 million enquiries and reaching 92.3 per cent of the activity seen during March 2021 when there was a stamp duty holiday.
Interest in products for million-pound plus homes and buy-to-let mortgages surged, with the former increasing by 18 per cent compared to January and the latter reporting its busiest month ever.
There were 60,602 searches for mortgages suitable for homes valued at £1m and over compared to 51,521 the month before.
ESIS documents produced for buy-to-let deals exceeded 20,000 consistently throughout February.
Searches for purchase accounted for 60 per cent of activity, totalling 863,119. This was a 1.5 per cent change on January. Remortgage searches totalled 568,941, up three per cent on the previous month.
Searches for first-time buyer products remained flat month-on-month at 19 per cent.
Product numbers
The number of mortgage products available on the Twenty7Tec platform dipped during the middle of the month but recovered and exceeded January levels by the end of the month. The firm said this happened as the market adjusted to new conditions.
Some 18 per cent of products available were in the 90 to 100 per cent loan to value range, the highest figure since the firm started tracking activity.
Overall, mortgage availability reached 87.6 per cent of the total products available before the pandemic, which was the previous peak.
Nathan Reilly, director of lender relationships at Twenty7Tec, said: “Despite being a shorter month, February outperformed January’s strong performance, particularly in the areas of total mortgage searches, the volumes of buy-to-let mortgage searches and the volume of searches in the £1m plus valuation range.
“Activity was stronger in the first half of the month so it will be interesting to see how momentum sustains into March and the pre-Easter push.”
