The quarterly report divides the results by firms dealing with first-time buyers, homeowners, buy-to-let borrowers, and applicants for specialist loans.
Intermediaries saw mortgage enquiries increase at the end of 2016, the Intermediary Mortgage Lender’s Association’s Mortgage Market Tracker suggests.
The average number of enquiries increased by 26% to 58 per intermediary in Q4 2016, up from 46 in the previous quarter and the largest average number recorded by the tracker.
Peter Williams, executive director of IMLA, said: “As the layers of regulation in the market become increasingly complicated, and the number of products increase, the intermediary market continues to play a very important role in the provision of mortgage finance to a variety of borrower types.
“It is very encouraging to see that the profile of the intermediary channel continues to grow among borrowers, and that many more are making it their first port of call.”
In addition to an increase in the number of enquiries brokers reportedly experienced a rise in the number of applications in principle (AIP) resulting in full applications rising from 70% to 73%.
Williams added: “It is encouraging to see that customer outcomes improved in the final quarter of 2016.
“There was a lot of uncertainty following the referendum result in the third quarter and it is clear that both lenders and borrowers had faith in the market in the final quarter, and were willing to capitalise on the low mortgage rates available.”
The quarterly report uses data from BDRC Continental to examine intermediary sector activity and divides the results by firms dealing with first-time buyers, homeowners, buy-to-let borrowers, and applicants for specialist loans.
This comes after data from the Council of Mortgage Lenders showed that combines volume of house purchase and remortgage buy-to-let transactions grew by only 1.4% from Q3 to Q4 in 2016.
