The Twenty7Tec platform recorded the highest ever monthly total for mortgage searches in March, surpassing the stamp duty-driven figure in March last year by 60,000 searches, according to the platform’s latest Mortgage Market Report.

With March mortgage searches reaching close to one million, Twenty7Tec expects to meet that figure in April given how the market is building in recent months. 

The 60:40 split for purchase and remortgage searches continued into March, with Twenty7Tec’s Niki Cooke suggesting it has “settled in for the medium term”.

The report also revealed that the total number of available mortgage products is now at 90.42% of pre-pandemic levels, with 24 mortgage providers currently offering more mortgage products on the Twenty7Tec platform than ever before.

The month also produced five of the ten busiest ever days for mortgage searches on the platform, while the rise in searches for properties valued at over £1m rose 12.95%.

Properties within the £1m+ range now form a larger percentage of the market for searches than ever before at 4.29%.

Mortgage search volumes were seen to be growing fastest at 14.64% month-on-month in the £200,000 to £500,000 valuation range, while the market softened in the 95%LTV range with March performing as the weakest month year to date. 

Twenty7Tec’s chief executive officer James Tucker explains: “Inflation driven interest rate rises continue to drive remortgage search volumes higher than predicted at the start of the year, even the purchase market remains buoyant in the face of wider macroeconomic uncertainty.”

He suggests that it’s “reasonable to expect some slowing of demand on both fronts as the year progresses”.

As an early indicator, the Twenty7Tec CEO says that it’s down 15% at the end of March compared to six weeks prior when looking at ESIS documents produced on a seven-day rolling basis. 

Twenty7Tec’s director of lender relationships Nathan Reilly comments: “There’s a lot of change happening in the mortgage market right now. Demand remains high for both purchase and remortgage mortgages, but inflation-driven interest rate changes are also influencing the volume of searches that we’re seeing.”

Reilly notes that comparing March 2022 with the two prior Marches is “very hard”. 

“March 2020 was the beginning of the UK’s lockdown, and we quickly went from the height of the market to the lows of the month afterwards. March 2021 was the stamp-duty-driven boom of last year. Nonetheless, March 2022 has exceeded both prior years for total mortgage searches and ESIS documents created,” he adds.