You are here: Home - News -

Barclays move a blow for London landlords – Ying Tan’s Market Monitor

by: Ying Tan
  • 15/05/2014
  • 0
Barclays move a blow for London landlords – Ying Tan’s Market Monitor
With a number of big market developments it has been an interesting month for the buy-to-let sector.

On the one hand we’ve had figures extolling the virtues of it with most of the nationals reporting on the research from Paragon Mortgages that show buy-to-let investments have outperformed all other investments over the past 18 years with annual returns of more than 16%.

Then on the other we’ve had Labour announcing it would cap rents for buy-to-let landlords if it were to get into power – in other words extinguishing any hopes of growth in the sector and thus putting paid to any chance of the performance highlighted by Paragon continuing.

One would hope the party will reconsider its plans amid growing criticism of them should it be successful next year.

Leeds Building Society has withdrawn its 75% and 80% LTV product range for buy-to-let. The mutual currently only offers up to 70% LTV for buy-to-let.

Kensington has removed its £195 administration fee from its buy-to-let range. It is also offering free valuation for purchases, and free valuation and legals for remortgages.

But the big change this month has been Woolwich moving to a rent calculation of 125% @ 5.79% from the previous 125% @ payrate. This is a real blow particularly for the lower yielding London market leaving only Clydesdale Bank and Hinckley and Rugby as the only lenders calculating at pay rate.

Clydesdale is now accepting product transfers on its standard product range while Accord BTL is accepting them on specific products, namely its two-year fixed rate at 3.74%, its five year fixed rate at 4.69% and its two year tracker rate at 3.64% (BoE base rate + 3.14%).

Ying Tan is managing director of the Buy to Let Club, part of The Buy to Let Business

There are 0 Comment(s)

You may also be interested in