UK mortgage market slowdown
As the UK seemingly enters a period of uncertain economic growth, and and an almost certain fall in house prices (the IMF believes that the UK mortgage market is overvalued by around 25%), it’s interesting to look at a Google Trends report for searches on the words ‘mortgage’ and ‘recession’:
It’s interesting to see that at almost the exact same time that people started searching for the word ‘recession’, the volume of searches for the word ‘mortgage’ started to drop, and the third quarter dip seen in previous years around Christmas was slightly sharper and more pronounced.
What’s also interesting to see is the sharp rise in searches for ‘mortgage’ at the end of the first quarter of 2008; however perhaps at this time the intent of the search has switched from looking to buy a mortgage, to being informational searches on the condition of the mortgage market. It will be interesting to watch these trends in future months…