Member Article

Buy-to-let booms

The buy-to-let sector now accounts for 13.4% of all outstanding mortgage lending in the UK, the Council of Mortgage Lenders reveals.

Gross mortgage lending of £4.2bn was advanced to buy-to-let landlords in the first quarter of 2013, although nearly half of this figure was for remortgaging, not new buys.

Of all mortgages in arrears of over three months, only 8.3% were buy-to-let, down from 9.0% the previous quarter and 10.5% in the first quarter of last year.

CML director general Paul Smee said: “The buy-to-let mortgage market is performing well, against a backdrop of robust landlord - and tenant - demand for good quality rental property. Loan performance compares favourably with the owner-occupier sector, and buy-to-let continues to grow as a proportion of the overall mortgage market.

“As the private rented sector looks likely to be the longer-term tenure in which more households may live in the future, lenders are actively looking at how they can best evolve their future lending for those landlords who may wish to offer longer-term tenancies to their tenants - although concrete landlord demand for such borrowing is not yet clear.”

Some commentators have questioned the impact of the Government’s Funding for Lending scheme on the buy-to-let sector, suggesting it has hampered aims to drive home ownership.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .