Last week was the busiest-ever January start for mortgage searches, data from Twenty7tec shows. 

The criteria platform says Wednesday (3 January) followed by Thursday (4 January) were the two busiest days ever at the beginning of a calendar year. 

This saw broker mortgage searches last week rise 5.5% to 80,812 searches, compared to enquiries in the first week of last year. 

This put last Wednesday and Thursday in the top 50 days for search volumes on the firm’s platform since it was founded in 2014. 

However, the sum of buy-to-let searches at 40,086 last week, was down 11.4% on the same week a year ago.

Twenty7tec director Nathan Reilly says: “2024 has certainly got off to a good start. Following the news that Rightmove saw a record number of homes putting their house up for sale on Boxing Day, enquiries are flooding through.

“Last year, we saw that January was the second busiest month of the year for first-time buyers and January, February, and March were the three busiest months of the year for FTB mortgage searches.  

“If things keep on going the way they are, we might see new records being made across the board for mortgage enquiries.”