What’s affecting product availability in March 2022?

March is always an odd time of year for the mortgage adviser and the broader housing industry. The moveable feast that is Easter means that it’s a little difficult to compare year-on-year. It’s made especially hard when we have interest rate changes, inflationary pressures, war and the pandemic to contend with.

Related topics:  Mortgages,  Special Features
Nathan Reilly | Twenty7Tec
8th March 2022
Twenty7Tec Nathan Reilly
"There was nuance in the picture: in February, there was more product availability volatility than we have seen since the first few weeks of the pandemic."

But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try and report accurate data, of course, as we want those in our industry to make informed decisions about how they operate, where they focus their efforts and how best they serve their clients.

As of today, we have over 18,000 products in the market for the first time since March 2020. The all time high of 20,302 products was on 27th February 2020, just over two years ago.

Today’s 18,049 products means that we’re at a two year high and at over 90% of the prior high mark for the first time in that interim period.

But whilst we just saw the latest high, there was nuance in the picture: in February, there was more product availability volatility than we have seen since the first few weeks of the pandemic.

In the middle of the month, the market dropped by 505 products available. Whilst it ended on a new high, we did see a lot of products removed and re-modelled over the course of eight or so days.

The market will have been taking a lot of things into account at the end of last month, including interest rates, swaps and more that may go some way to explaining the changing positions.

People often ask us if we’re able to predict where the market might be in a month’s time. One reason why we shy away from making predictions is that from that all-time high in late February 2020, it took only six weeks for the market to hit its all-time low on our systems. On 16th April 2020, we had contracted by almost 65% to just 7,784 products.

Hence, we’ll leave predictions to the economists.

But what is clear is that the market remains incredibly buoyant. First, this is the quickest year that we have made it to three million mortgage searches and we are now on our way towards the four million mortgage search mark- perhaps even by the end of March. Second, product availability is high and available across the valuation and LTV ranges. Third, the volume of searches for first time buyers remains high. Fourth, we have some major remortgaging periods on the near horizon which will sustain the market. Finally, February was the highest month ever on our system for buy to let mortgage searches.

All in all, a complex, but healthy looking picture.

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