The Index shows that:
• The average number of live products available to Mortgage Intermediaries rose from 2,777 in March to 2,858 in April – a rise of 81 individual products and an increase of 3%.
• The figure is an average for April during which product numbers reached a high of 3,190 and fell to a low of 2,519.
• Year on year analysis shows that mortgage product availability dropped from 15,692 in April 2008 and from 77,996 products in April 2007.
The average number of live Direct only products available in the month of April was 1,009.
However, 716,876 mortgage sources were performed in April which is a fall in intermediary activity of 10.69% when compared with March - a fall in broker activity in real terms of 85,831 individual mortgage searches. This is a significant 57% drop in broker activity from April 2008 and equates to almost a million (968,479) fewer individual mortgage searches performed.
David Aylmer, marketing and business development director at TrigoldCrystal commented on the results saying: “April’s figures have not given us much to be cheerful about with broker activity down and just a modest fall in the average monthly mortgage payment. Broker activity which is derived from the number of times mortgage sourcing is performed shows that the number of sources fell by 11% in April to 716,876 which is the lowest activity level for a month since December.
“However, the increase in product numbers is small but they are at least heading in the right direction.”
