The latest Mortgage Solutions People’s Poll, conducted as part of buy-to-let week, asked brokers if they were completing more buy-to-let business than at this point last year.
Over a quarter of respondents (27%) said they had witnessed a large increase in buy-to-let since last year while a further 46% had seen a small increase in this time. This means 73% have seen an upturn in business in this sector.
Just under one-in-five brokers (18%) said their business was flat year-on-year with 9% believing their buy-to-let business had shrunk in the past 12 months.
Buy-to-let has traditionally been broker dominated and recent figures released by the Council of Mortgage Lenders showed the number of buy-to-let advances completed in January totalled 15,700.
This figure is 8% higher than the previous month and 37% up on the start of 2013.
This market could have been given a further boost in Chancellor George Osborne’s Budget yesterday as he made major changes to the pensions and annuities market. This has prompted speculation that more retirees could choose to invest in property.
“With pensioners no longer being rail-roaded into investing in annuities they will be looking for other higher yielding investments – that inevitably means a huge boost to buy-to-let investments,” said Mark Giddens, partner at accountancy firm UHY Hacker Young.
