Mortgage Market Snapshot: not all bad news

Finance tech company Twenty7tec has produced mortgage market statistics for July 2023 - and it’s not all bad news…

July was the second quietest month for mortgage searches in 2023 (1,507,470 searches in total compared to 1,747,323 in June 2023);

Purchase mortgage searches were down 13.1 per cent in July compared to June; and 

Remortgage searches were down 15.0 per cent.

Buy To Let mortgage searches were down 18.3 per cent nationwide in July compared to June, while searches by First Time Buyers were down 9.3 per cent.

First Time Buyers (as a percentage of the market) nudged upwards from their significant lows in June.

Searches for Two-year fixed mortgages accounted for 44.1 per cent of all fixed product searches compared to just 22.45 per cent in the same month a year earlier.

Three- to five-year fixed mortgages now account for 34.55 per cent of all fixed product searches (compared to 41.58 per cent a year ago).

Five- to ten-year fixed mortgages now account for 21.38 per cent compared to 35.97 per cent a year ago

Nathan Reilly, director at Twenty7tec, says: @July 2023 saw constrained activity compared to the prior month and I think that the market is hoping for better news for the remainder of the second half of the year. 

“It tends to be a little flatter in June and July as heads turn to holidays, with an uptick often beginning in August. 

“It’s not all doom and gloom, however: despite dropping 15 per cent compared to the prior month, July 2023 was the fourth busiest month on record for remortgage ESIS documents and seventh for total remortgage searches.

“In keeping with prior years, we saw an almost 10 per cent drop in the number of first time buyers’ searches nationwide alongside a 3.9 per cent drop in the average property value they are looking to buy in July 2023. 

“Brokers and advisers will continue to feel busier as the average number of searches run per ESIS document produced is also significantly higher than the prior month. 

“On the supply side, we saw a 13.78 per cent rise in mortgage product availability. There have never been more max LTV 70 per cent products in the market, whereas max LTV 95 per cent products are only at 69.82 per cent of their all-time high availability.”