This year we have already seen a marked increase in the number of lenders and it looks like we will see further expansion as the year progresses, with Yorkshire Building Society and Santander poised to enter the market.

It’s early days, but I expect landlords and brokers will see solid benefits, as there will be greater competition and hopefully some innovation.

Too much lender activity has been very “me-too” in its nature, with many lenders simply copying what they see from the mainstream buy-to-let players.

Everyone wants to lend to the small-scale property investor, typically someone with a portfolio of one to three properties, at low LTVs, but it is the larger-scale landlord who dominates the market.

Analysis of government data shows that 73% of all property in the buy-to-let market is owned by just 11% of investors. Roughly speaking that means just 120,000 landlords owning over three million homes.

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Brokers may well benefit from being more inventive with this market segment. Professional landlords should be targeted and cultivated; they can’t be expected to roll in off the street.

The hard work required to secure professional landlords as clients is worthwhile.

Lenders will find these are repeat customers for both purchases and remortgages and may well be engaged in a number of transactions every year.

In addition, when dealing with larger-scale landlords, it is important that intermediaries fully understand their client’s business model and wider financial profile.

Professional landlords will typically be involved in complex areas of buy to let, such as multi-property portfolio deals (especially since the government changed the Stamp Duty tax status on multi-unit purchases) or purchases with a commercial aspect.

Therefore, the lender involved will require a full picture of the landlord’s financial position, including information on their existing portfolio, which other lenders they have exposure to, the sectors they operate in, their approach to lettings and, importantly, their financial interests outside of buy to let.

Such a level of information gathering requires a significant amount of paperwork and a major issue for many buy-to-let lenders, particularly those operating at the professional spectrum of the landlord scale, is that too many cases are submitted via intermediaries with incomplete documentation.

This simply leads to a paper chase, delaying the process and leading to frustration on behalf of all parties.

It is a simple piece of advice, but one that some intermediaries outside of the core buy-to-let broker houses fail to adhere to. Understanding the client’s business model and the requirements of individual lenders certainly helps smooth this process.

John Heron is managing director of Paragon Mortgages