First-time buyers search most for mortgage advice

Friday 27th January 2012

First-time buying was the most sought after area of mortgage advice throughout 2011 on its ‘find a mortgage adviser’ search, the website ‘unbiased’ has reported.
 
Consumer searches for first-time buying advice overtook all other areas of advice from January through to October, ending the year at 36% of searches in December.

The peak was in August last year when 41% of all mortgage searches were for first-time buying advice. On average across the year, 37% of all searches made by consumers were for a mortgage adviser specialising in first-time buying.
 
Buy-to-let inquiries jumped from 17% as a proportion of the total of mortgage searches in September to 25% in October and stayed at that level for the rest of the year – the highest ever number of buy-to-let searches yet on unbiased.

Searches for remortgage advice fluctuated, ranging between 29% and 36%. Residential mortgage advice searches represented 21% of the total, equity release 6% and sub-prime just 4%.