"The market is currently being sustained by buy-to-let taking a stamp duty holiday, not first-time buyers."
Its research shows that both purchase and remortgage searches are down compared to October, by 12.6% and 11.2%, respectively.
Buy-to-let mortgage searches also dipped by 6.9% compared to October.
Searches were also down across all valuation ranges – the least affected group were for properties worth more than £1m.
Remortgages are forming a larger part of total searches at 34.34%, up considerably on August's low of 30.92%.
The data also shows that ESIS document volumes are currently at 85.6% of the year's high on a seven-day rolling basis.
The volume of buy-to-let ESIS documentation is rising again as a proportion of all documents prepared, now standing at 22.45% of all documents.
James Tucker, founder and CEO of Twenty7Tec, said: "The remortgage market at 34.34% is creeping back up as a proportion of the overall searches, albeit in a contracting search market. The long-term ratio for purchase to remortgage is around 60:40 or 55:45, so there's room for more of a rebalancing yet. Deferred mortgage payments – often called mortgage holidays – have clearly impacted this part of the market.
"There remains a lack of products in the market, which means that the level of demand is putting pressure on those fewer products and the teams that sit behind them. Greater certainty is likely to give confidence to more players to come back with increased ranges of products. Unfortunately, the volume of variables involved make it hard to predict when greater certainty is likely to emerge – it could be post-Brexit, it could after the stamp duty holiday period ends, it could be when we get brighter economic forecasts."
Phil Bailey, sales director at Twenty7Tec, added: "Our report this month has a special focus on the 90% LTV range. We have seen several lenders announce that they are issuing new products in this range this month, but overall we've seen a drop in the total number of products available.
"Has the stamp duty scheme worked for 90%+ LTV mortgages? That's for others to say. But if the intention was in any way to reinvigorate a 90%+ LTV first-time buyer-led recovery then the frank appraisal after looking at our data has to be: No.
"Our chart shows the volume of documents prepared in the 90%+ range for all days this year on a 7-day rolling average. The stark difference from Spring is obvious. The market is currently being sustained by buy-to-let taking a stamp duty holiday, not first-time buyers."
