"May 2023 was characterised by its strong performance despite its unusual tally of three bank holidays."
Purchase mortgage searches were up 7.9% in May 2023 compared to April, while remortgage searches rose 11.1% and buy-to-let and first-time buyer searches both increased by 7.7%, the latest figures form Twenty7tec show.
Its data reveals that May was the second busiest ever month for self-employed mortgage searches.
Over the month, two-year fixed mortgages accounted for 42.76% of all fixed product searches compared to just 22.37% in May 2022.
Three to five-year fixed mortgages now account for 33.12% of all fixed product searches (compared to 41.51% a year ago) and five to ten-year fixes account for 24.13% compared to 36.12% a year ago.
Nathan Reilly, director at Twenty7tec, said: “May 2023 was characterised by its strong performance despite its unusual tally of three bank holidays. Some of the drop in activity that we experienced in April was recovered, but we’re expecting a bank-holiday-free, pre-summer holiday June 2023 to see activity rise even further. Although it will be interesting to see if this front-end activity translates through to applications after last week's economic update and the impacts this has had on interest rates. The rate decision by the Bank of England will almost certainly mean that we’ll see a rise in mortgage searches just before and just after June 22nd.
“Whilst product numbers are largely down due to last week's inflation update and lenders taking stock, the market is still in a far better position than post-mini budget as availability remains broadly consistent across all areas.”
“The move in fixed mortgages has definitely swung back towards the two-year products which now account for the same proportion of the market as they did two years ago. It will be interesting to see whether this theme continues. It seems customers are favouring some level of certainty rather than trying to predict the market and roll the dice on the long-term future of base rate.
“May 2023 also saw the highest proportion of mortgage searches by the self-employed, and the second highest total searches by that group since we began reporting."
