According to Twenty7Tec’s monthly report for April, purchase searches accounted for 62 per cent and remortgage searches accounted for 38 per cent of overall mortgage searches.
The report noted that purchase searches had fallen by around 15.6 per cent month-on-month while remortgage searches had fallen by around a quarter.
Buy-to-let searches in April also fell by 20 per cent month-on-month.
The biggest fall in searches happened for properties valued over £1m, which fell by 16 per cent month-on-month.
The company said that just over 20 per cent of searches came from first-time buyers, which is the first time this has occurred since June 2021.
The report also found that the number of products on the market contracted by 19 per cent month-on-month, which it said was the first fall in 18 months.
The company suggested that this could be due to lenders waiting on the Bank of England’s (BoE) decision around raising interest rates, which happened today as the base rate rose to one per cent.
It added that searches for fixed, stepped, tacker capped, discount, variable and libor products all fell slightly month-on-month, but said that this could be due to frantic activity in the month prior.
The firm said that search volumes were also down across all loan to value (LTV) ranges for March and February.
The report said that whilst April saw fewer searches, the volume of ESIS documents produced “continued to be strong” with 16,306 documents products in April compared to 18,763 in March.
Searches around credit history, visas and residency and first-time buyers were the three most popular searches.
James Tucker (pictured), founder and chief executive of Twenty7Tec, said “It’s hard to determine if the changes we’ve seen in the market are due to a change in confidence, economic outlook, the upcoming Bank of England potential rate change or simply down to April having fewer working days and everyone needing a well-earned break. The next few days for the market are going to be very instructive.”
