November 2021 was the second busiest month for total mortgage searches in the past two years, with March 2021 being the busiest, according to Twenty7Tec’s Mortgage Market Report.

As a proportion of the mortgage market in November 2021, remortgages accounted for 43.4%, while purchases accounted for the remaining 56.8%.

17 of the top 20 days this year for buy-to-let (BTL) were in November 2021 and 2 November was the first time there was more than 20,000 documents produced on a single day on the Twenty7Tec platform.

As well as this, 17.6% of all mortgage searches in November 2021 were by first-time buyers, the lowest share of searches since the first lockdown.

There was a 7% rise in fixed mortgage volumes, while every other mortgage type saw a slight fall in volumes.

On 4 November, remortgage ESIS documents overtook purchase ESIS document volumes for the first time in over a year.

Six of the 10 busiest days this year for creating ESIS documents were in November 2021.

James Tucker, founder of Twenty7Tec, said: “Continuing the trend from the previous month, remortgage searches continued to dominate in November 2021.

“In terms of volumes overall however, November was definitely a month of two halves.

“Huge volumes of searches and documents created in the first half, and a major drop off in most areas – buy-to-let being the exception – in the second half of the month.

“If we extrapolate this forward, it could indicate that property transactions through Q1 and early Q2 2022 could be down fairly significantly on 2021.

“Of course, the new COVID variant could also be starting to play a role in a general slowing down in the market.”