Mortgage searches jumped by as much as 10% after the Bank of England raised interest rates last month, data from Twenty7tec shows.
The mortgage data platform says broker home loan searches were 8.8% higher on the day after the central bank lifted rates by 25 basis points to 4.5% on 11 May than the day before — and 10% higher in the week after the hike compared to the previous week.
Since then, a raft of lenders have pulled and repriced mortgages as they have reacted to rising swap rates on ‘higher for longer’ Bank of England base rate expectations after disappointing inflation figures late last month.
The latest data put inflation at 8.7% more than four times the BoE target rate of 2%.
The data comes as markets bet that the BoE will hike the base rate to 5.75%, or 6%, before they begin to fall.
Twenty7tec director of customer relationships Nathan Reilly says: “We’ve run the stats and have seen that there’s a 10% hike in mortgage search activity the week after the announcement compared to the week before.
“If the market has called it right, Mortgage advisers are going to be busier than usual from Friday. And lenders will, of course, be busy thinking about how to modify products.
“The vast majority of lenders now make adjustments within the first 24 hours of a rate rise.”
The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee is due to hold its next interest rate meeting on 22 June.
