New figures show movers surpassing first-time buyers

June 10, 2021 by Heidi

Borrowers

The figures for the first quarter of this year, which have been released by UK Finance, show that the number of people looking to move to a new property surpassed those of first-time homebuyers.

These figures reveal a rise of 82% in the number of home-movers during 2021 Q1, compared with the same period last year. As UK Finance points out, this took home-mover numbers to the highest level since 2007, prior to the financial crash of 2008.

Furthermore, when the number of mortgages approved during the first quarter of 2021 is tallied up, it shows that there was a total of 131,980 for people moving from one home to another. In comparison, there were just 97,450 mortgages approved for people buying their first home.

Richard Pike from Phoebus Software sought to explain this sharp rise in home-mover numbers, telling Mortgage Strategy that:

“This perhaps shows the effect that the stamp duty holiday was having, encouraging a different sector of the market to take advantage, when FTBs already had the benefit of SDLT holiday.”

Pike went on to say that first-time buyer numbers could soon rise to match those of home-movers, if the ‘First Homes’ project being launched by the government, plus the help-to-buy scheme, have the effect on the market that they are intended to. He pointed out that the return of 95% loan-to-value (LTV) products would help with that as well.

The evidence is that home-movers are a rising market share, which advisors will want to use their CeMAP training to target.