Searches for mortgage products dropped month-on-month in February across most borrowers except first-time buyers, an adviser tech provider said.
Data collated from Twenty7tec showed that compared to January, there were 0.05% fewer searches for purchases and 5.39% fewer for remortgage.
Across the residential market, there was a 2.28% contraction in purchase mortgage searches, and remortgage queries fell by 5.64%. However, there was a small 0.44% uptick in searches for products for first-time buyers.
Meanwhile, buy-to-let (BTL) purchase mortgage searches fell 1.85% month-on-month, and BTL remortgages were 6.13% lower.
Activity was also down compared to a year ago, with Twenty7tec recording a 3.61% drop in overall purchase mortgage searches, and a 29.9% fall in remortgage queries.
Looking at each market, there was a 2.01% dip in residential purchase mortgage searches, a 32.37% decline in residential remortgage searches, and first-time buyer interest was down by 0.62%.
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On the BTL side, purchase searches were 14.23% lower and remortgage searches were 24.12% down.
Minimal move to longer-term fixes
There was a marginal shift to longer-term fixed products, as searches for two-year fixes made up 41.05% of all fixed product queries, slightly down from 41.13% a year earlier. At the same time, searches for 5-10-year fixes rose from a share of 23.14% to 23.24%.
Interest in 3-5-year fixes remained broadly the same, making up 35.71% of all fixed product searches in February this year, compared to 35.73% last year.
Twenty7tec said there was a 13.19% rise in submissions made through its mortgage submission platform Apply, when comparing the year to date to the same period in 2024.
It said because affordability was still important to borrowers, it was not surprising to see a 39.9% rise in the use of affordability criteria compared to the previous month, and a 78.5% increase on the year before.
It said the use of its affordability criteria in mortgage searches for the year to date was 57.8% higher than the same period in 2024.
A slower month for the mortgage market
Nathan Reilly (pictured), director at Twenty7tec, said: “February 2025 was a slightly slower month than we might have hoped for. There were some strong performances in the volumes of first-time buyer mortgage searches, but we plateaued in purchase mortgage searches overall.
“February 2024 was such a strong month and, indeed, the whole start to 2024 was so strong that any subsequent years are going to struggle to compare. But away from those figures and compared to any other year, 2025 is off to a really good start.”
He added: “In particular, February 2025 was busy for first-time buyers, with the month recording the highest ever proportion of first-time buyers in the mortgage searches at 22.51%. New products and improved rates in the upper loan-to-value ranges (90% and 95%) helped attract first-time buyers, it seems.
“March will be a telling month as Easter is later this year, although eyes will inevitably turn to the Bank of England rate decision on the 20th as the Monetary Policy Committee tries to balance the need for a growing, fully functioning market with inflationary pressures. We look forward to reporting on the outcomes in a few weeks’ time.”
