"April will clearly be even more revealing as the broker searches could change more dramatically than anything we have seen to date."
Chancellor Rishi Sunak first announced the three month mortgage payment holiday on the 18th of March and it has since become the most searched for term in residential mortgages and the second most searched for term in buy-to-let.
However, other than the Covid-19 search, Knowledge Bank says it is "remarkably business as usual" with 'maximum age at end of term', 'interest-only', and 'self employed with one year’s accounts' making up four of the top five most searched for residential mortgage terms. However, ‘defaults registered in the past three years’ is at number five, with the firm expecting this to rise through the ranks over the coming months.
The announcement that landlords may also take a three month payment holiday if their tenants experience financial difficulties was announced on the 20th March, two days after the homeowner announcement. Perhaps this lag accounts for the fact that ‘Covid-19 Mortgage Payment Holidays’ for buy-to-let only reached the second most searched for term. Lending to limited companies remained the most popular term for the third month running, followed by first-time landlords.
Second charges showed a new entry at number five - a search for ‘AVMs and desktop valuations’ – a criteria that Knowledge Bank expects to see across every category in the coming months. This month, for the first time, brokers were also searching for minimum loan amounts, showing a potential need to release cash at this difficult time. This was followed by 'mortgage arrears or defaults', then 'debt management plan'.
Last month, Knowledge Bank created a free ‘Covid-19 Criteria Live Feed’ to provide brokers awith a single point of reference for all criteria and policy changes.
At its peak, Knowledge Bank saw almost 500 changes to criteria from 14 different lenders in a 48 hour period.
Nicola Firth, founder and CEO of Knowledge Bank, said: “With the number of lender criteria changes increasing by the day there has never been a more important time to have subscription to a criteria search engine.
“As the UK’s largest and most comprehensive mortgage criteria search system, the industry looks to us to provide up-to-date and accurate information on lending policy. At this time of change it is important to reflect the issues and the searches that brokers are carrying out as it reflects on the market as a whole.
“The number of broker registrations and searches has increased exponentially over the past three weeks and the a peek into those searches provides us with a fascinating insight. April will clearly be even more revealing as the broker searches could change more dramatically than anything we have seen to date.”
