Visits to property website up 7% on January 2019

I’ve just read that visits to Rightmove surpassed 150 million for the first time in January, making it the busiest month ever recorded. There were said to be over 152 million visits to the property portal in January, a 7% increase on January 2019. The top five busiest days ever on Rightmove were all said to be between 21st and 29th January, with Wednesday 29th topping the list. There were reported to be over 5.7 million visits on that day, up 9% on the previous record set back on 24th April 2019. Time spent by home hunters on the site was up 4%, with people spending a total of 1.17 billion minutes on there.

These are pretty remarkable numbers and ones that will hopefully relate into the prospect of rising activity levels, especially in the lead up to a usually active late Winter/early Spring period.

Unless you are incredibly lucky, you’re probably going to need a mortgage to buy your dream home. A mortgage is the biggest debt you’re likely to ever take on, so you need to do your homework and understand more than just what the national press decide to publish about the Bank of England base rate being held at 0.75% again, or how much profit the banks are currently making! Or what a mate says in the pub!

Advice is crucial and ideally from a company who can offer ‘whole of market’ mortgages, not just products from a limited panel of lenders, like some Estate Agency chains or a Bank/Building Society who only offer their own or a limited set of products.

I guess what I am saying is think before you agree to use any in-house service of this type as overall, it may not always be in your best interests, and as this is the largest financial transaction you will be involved in at the time, it is important to feel comfortable about it. Also, to have some independence in the event of any concerns or disputes makes great sense.

Finally, make sure you ask questions! For example, if you’re not being offered ‘whole of market’ products and instead are being offered mortgage products from a ‘limited panel of lenders’, you may be missing out on the best product available to you. You are, after all, in the driving seat.