Remortgage completions up 41% in January: LMS

New remortgage instructions dipped by 21% in January with pipeline cases decreasing by 6% month-on-month.

43% of borrowers increased their loan size in January and 64% took out a five-year fixed rate product.

29% of remortgagers’ primary aim when remortgaging was to lower monthly payments, with the average monthly payment decreasing by £231.

Nick Chadbourne, CEO of LMS, said: “Although remortgage instructions are down month-on-month, this just because December saw a barrage of activity due to an ERC date. There is always a slowish start to January too, but year on year we are around 60% up and the end of the month had a particularly high run rate.

"We are seeing the same on transactional activity. February activity was high and the softening we expected is not materialising. It looks like people are still looking to move house while rates are low and, if we had the stock of houses available, the market could still be running like last year.

"In short, both sides of the industry will be incredibly busy for the foreseeable. The next major ERC date is the 1st April so all remortgage eyes will be on that, while the pipelines in transactional teams also remain swollen creating capacity challenges for any all conveyancers. Q2 will soften for remortgages after the big April 1st spike, but this will be short lived as H2 has more product expiries than any six-month period in the past 10 years.”