Demand for homes in the housing market is expected to continue to follow the current trend. Hopeful homebuyers are not being detoured by rising house prices. They are instead becoming savvy buyers and using all the tools they have to find the right property at the right price and that includes using online resources for shopping around for property, agents, developers, and mortgage deals.

According to online property lister Rightmove, record number of visitors clicked onto their website to search for a home. January data showed an increase of 21 million visits to the site compared to January 2014. Also, there was a new record high of the number of enquiries to agents and developers at over 4.9 million leads. This surpassed the previous record of 4.8 million set in July 2015.

The previous record of visits to Rightmove was set in August 2015 at 118 million, but January visitors surpassed that by almost 20% with 127 million visits.

The time property shoppers spent in January on the site equaled 2,000 years. Page views for the site totaled a new record of 1.7 billion. This is over one million more pages than were viewed in January 2015.

The highest site visiting day was Tuesday, 26 January.

With such high demand from those shopping around at properties, it could offer a glimpse into the future of the demand that will be seen in seeking out lending and actually making purchases. As UK consumers continue to have confidence in the future and interest rates remain low, demand can be expected to remain high from those seeking to climb onto the property ladder, move home, or invest. As supply of homes coming onto the market continues to be low, those watching house prices should expect more increases over the months ahead.