According to the quarterly Financial Adviser Confidence Tracking survey (FACT) carried out by Paragon, buy-to-let now accounts for 23.3% of intermediaries’ business, compared to 19.3% 12 months earlier.
According to the FACT survey, 40% of landlords who took out a buy-to-let mortgage in the fourth quarter of 2011 did so to buy more property and expand their portfolios, while a third took advantage of increased competition among buy-to-let mortgage lenders and remortgaged their existing arrangements.
Interestingly, the advisers surveyed also reported a rise in the number of first-time landlords applying for buy-to-let finance, growing from 19% in the third quarter of 2011 to 23% in the fourth.
When asked for their views on what the likely availability of buy-to-let finance would be in the first quarter of 2012, half of intermediaries said that they thought availability would improve and 41% said it would remain the same.
John Heron (pictured), managing director of Paragon Mortgages, said: “The final quarter of 2011 was for many intermediaries a successful one, with increased optimism about the coming months and a steady improvement in the level of buy-to-let business being written. With record levels of rental demand being reported it is good to see that existing landlords are increasing the size of their portfolios but it is particularly notable that the proportion of new landlords is also increasing.
“If these trends are maintained through early 2012 it would seem that the broad expectation of a further expansion of the buy-to-let market in 2012 is well founded.”
