Remortgage searches hit record levels last month, while purchase enquiries lifted to their second busiest ever month on the Twenty7tec platform, following interest rates rising to a 15-year high.
Broker searches for clients looking for a fresh mortgage deal jumped 21.9% to 825,736 enquiries in June, compared to the month before, sending this category to its highest ever monthly level.
Purchase searches edged up 0.6% to 1,747,323 last month, which was enough to make it the second busiest ever month for these enquiries on the platform. The top month for this type of home loan came in March, with 1,852,718 enquires.
The data comes after the Bank of England hiked the base rate by 50 basis points to 5% last month, its 13th rate rise in a row since December 2021, taking it to the highest level in a decade and a half.
The search engine adds that buy-to-let mortgage searches lifted 11.1% in June 2023 compared to the month before.
It adds that searches on behalf of first-time buyers rose 1% last month, but as a percentage of the overall market dropped to their lowest level since last September to 16.5%, its second lowest mark in over three years.
Two-year fixed mortgages accounted for 42.6% of all fixed-rate product searches last month, compared to just 21.4% a year ago.
Three- to five-year fixed-rate deals now account for 33.7% of all fixed product searches, compared to 41% a year ago.
While five- to ten-year fixed-rate mortgages now account for 23.7%, compared to 36.1% a year ago.
There were 13,449 products available on the site at the end of June, the lowest level so far this year.
Twenty7tec director Nathan Reilly says: “June 2023 saw the Bank of England raise rates further. The market seemed to have priced it in ahead of time and so the week before the rise was very busy, as was the week after when thousands of product changes were made.
“It’s worth noting that in the 18 months since we began reporting green mortgage searches, 24 June 2023 was the first day without any searches for green mortgages at all.”
