Twenty7Tec, the market-leading mortgage tech provider, has released its monthly findings from the UK mortgage market for October.

Key findings for October 2021 include:

• Purchase mortgage search volumes are at their lowest proportion of the market since May 2020
• First time buyers are at their lowest proportion of mortgage searches since June 2020
• Searches for mortgages products in the 95% LTV range have also dropped - now half the volume at the time the guarantee scheme was introduced
• Buy To Let had its second best month of 2021 (after March) 
• Fixed mortgages now constitute a greater percentage of the total than at any time since we began reporting the monthly mortgage figures
• In another first, remortgage ESIS documents came close to overtaking purchase ESIS documents this past week
• Nine of the ten busiest days in 2021 for remortgaging ESIS documents were in October 2021
• October saw the six single busiest days for mortgage searches where one of the applicants was retired.

James Tucker, founder of Twenty7Tec says:

“The market is changing, and fast. We should be in the midst of a house purchase boom right now as we traditionally are in the 11 weeks prior to Christmas. Instead, the purchase market is not as firm as we’d expect, and remortgages appear to be the order of the day.

“With a drop off in first time buyer activity and a lower proporion of searches coming in the 95%-100% LTV range, we believe that the pre-Christmas mortgage market is slowing a little.

“Buy To Let remains strong, with five of the eight busiest days this year all within October 2021. Buy To Let is picking up the slack from First Time Buyers.”