Following the chancellor Rishi Sunak’s announcement he was increasing the stamp duty threshold to £500,000, thousands ‘flocked’ to get borrowing quotes from Nationwide.

It said, as well as its affordability tool experiencing a rush, its quick quote mortgage calculator – which provides an idea of how much the society could lender homebuyers in a few minutes – also saw experienced a surge which was 49% higher than usual.

As the chancellor was on his feet delivering the speech there as a 70% higher than normal increase in traffic to website.

And then it experienced a 70% spike again at around 7pm which the building society suggested was down to people finishing work and discussing a potential house move with family.

The data provides hard evidence of what many predicted would happen as soon as the stamp duty holiday was introduced.

Indeed, Laura Suter, personal finance analyst at AJ Bell described the move as providing a ‘sugar rush’ to the market, with people who were planning to move hurrying to do so before the stamp duty holiday ends in March 2021.

Matt Smith, chief product owner – mortgages, Nationwide Building Society said: “It’s really interesting to see that our Mortgage Tools had a significant spike in usage as the Chancellor announced stamp duty changes.”