According to Twenty7tec, purchase mortgage searches were down 22.1 per cent in the first 15 days of April compared to the same period last month.
Remortgage searches fell by over 26 per cent compared to the same period in the prior month.
The company added that it buy-to-let mortgage searches were also impacted, down by around 29 per cent compared to the first half of March.
Twenty7tec added that first-time buyers as percentage of all searches rose to around 18.5 per cent of all mortgage searches in the first half of April, slightly up from 17 per cent in the first half of March.
The company continued that there were 628 fewer mortgage products on the platform in the first few weeks of April than the same time a month ago and there are 676 fewer now than there were at March’s end.
It added that fixed rates continued to dominate searches accounting for nearly half of all searches. This was followed by stepped mortgages at 13.5 per cent and tracker mortgages at 105 per cent.
Nathan Reilly, director at Twenty7tec says: “The Easter dip lasts a lot longer than you might think. As holidays for customers and advisers kick in, we often see the four-day weekend result in an 11-day impact on mortgage search volumes.
“Until Easter, this year had been consistently busy for buy-to-let mortgage searches. Since mid-January, on a seven-day rolling basis, every day of the year until Easter was among our 100 busiest ever for buy-to-let mortgage searches.”
He continued: “We’ve now seen a post-Easter rebound and we expect the Spring boom to continue over the coming weeks.”
