"Across residential and all forms of ESIS docs, we’re now over 10% lower than the year’s busiest weeks."
Its figures show that weekly mortgage search volumes are currently at 87.33% of the year’s highest figure, down 0.5% on the week before.
Residential mortgage search volumes are at 85.94% of the year’s high, down 1.9% on the week before, however buy-to-let mortgage search volumes are at 94.18% of the year’s high, up 2.3% on the previous week.
Weekly mortgage ESIS documentation figures are down 2.7% on the week before, with residential ESIS dropping 3.2% and buy-to-let figures down 0.5%.
James Tucker, CEO of Twenty7Tec, said: “Overall, we’ve seen activity levels drop away a little in both mortgage searches and ESIS documentation volumes over this second week of lockdown. The only figure up on last week is the volume of buy-to-let searches – which are now at 94.18% of the year’s highest activity levels. Across residential and all forms of ESIS docs, we’re now over 10% lower than the year’s busiest weeks.
“Buy-to-let had a definite slump in the run up to lockdown 2.0 and troughed on November 4th, the day this second lockdown began. However, since that low, on a seven-day rolling average, we’ve seen quite a return of buy-to-let search volumes and a smaller but definite recovery in buy-to-let documents being prepared.
“Any drop in mortgage demand prior to lockdowns – and we have seen this each time regionally and nationally – is offset as soon as the actual lockdown begins. The demand doesn’t want to stay pent up for too long.
“This week is traditionally very busy in the run up to the peak period that runs from beginning October to mid-December. This year, two factors have combined to make it even busier: the stamp duty holiday end date and the longer lead times to get a mortgage approved. We believe that these factors will sustain the levels of searches and ESIS documents for at least the next three weeks. It’s worth remembering that we are still at least 10% busier now for both residential and buy-to-let than we were in our busy springtime.
“Buy-to-let currently forms 19.76% of all searches in the past week and 21.33% of all documents prepared against in the past week. Buy-to-let searches volumes currently form slightly less than the long term average of market activity – 20.49% and just above average for documentation 21.13%.”
