Market boom goes on according to strong mortgage sea...

A mortgage technology platform has released figures suggesting the housing market remains strong, with high numbers of searches by buyers for the best loans.

Twenty7Tec’s latest figures show the state of the mortgage market after the second week of the latest England lockdown.

Weekly mortgage online search volumes are currently at 87.33 per cent of the year’s highest figure, down just 0.5 per cent on the previous week.

Specifically, owner occupation mortgage search volumes are at 85.94% of the year’s high, down 1.9 per cent on the week before, while buy to let mortgage search volumes are at 94.18 per cent of the year’s high, up 2.3 per cent on the previous week.

“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 explains James Tucker, chief executive of Twenty7Tec.

“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 documents for at least the next three weeks. It’s worth remembering that we are still at least 10 per cent busier now for both residential and buy to let than we were in our busy springtime.”

He adds: “Buy to let had a definite slump in the run up to lockdown 2.0 and troughed on November 4, 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.

“Buy to let currently forms 19.76 per cent of all searches in the past week and 21.33 per cent 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 per cent and just above average for documentation 21.13 per cent.”