Private Rented Sector Buy to Let Consultants
For a long time, in our corporate consulting work with mortgage companies and brokers, I have advised lenders and brokers that the “one size fits all” mortgage lending approach in buy to let may be nearing the end of its shelf life. Our work may soon start to bear fruit. Eventually, other mortgage lenders will follow and design mortgage products […]
Read moreMany local authorities, housing associations and charities designing strategies to try to get private landlords to let to tenants on Local Housing Allowance are very fond of doing surveys of landlords. (Readers of this blog will know how critical I was of one particular survey of landlords that, last year, was used to make some astonishing claims for the impact […]
Read moreOne of the curious aspects of landlord behaviour is a failure to look beyond the initial mortgage rate deal terms. And comparison sites don’t help as they rarely say what the follow on rate is once the initial attractive deal period ends. I have seen many mortgage deals recently where you will see some great headline rate – but it’s […]
Read moreSometimes government policy doesn’t seem to join up too well – with different policies apparently conflicting with each other. Two good examples are (1) the lending activities of state owned banks which appear to hamper what local councils are trying to do with their private rented sector access schemes, especially lease schemes and (2) policies on HMOs which appear to […]
Read moreLandlord readers of this column will know that LettingFocus’s stance these days is now very much built around consulting with organisations who sell products and services to the private rented sector. Basically we tell them how to do it better! Our two biggest client groups are banks / financial institutions who sell mortgage loans to landlords (commonly known as “buy […]
Read moreMy blog post last week (about what mortgage companies could do to support landlords more), generated 27 emails from managers at buy to let mortgage lenders and ten from landlords. One aspect that I referred to, in passing, was how the mortgage lenders had been “behind the play” in terms of understanding how bad buy to let mortgage lending and […]
Read moreMortgage companies writing buy to let mortgages could do more to reduce the possibility of future arrears. It is a subject that we have written about extensively before at this blog, not least because the activities of the lenders exasperates not just would be borrowers but also mortgage brokers who often find many of the activities of the lenders hard […]
Read moreWhilst one or two new lenders have appeared on the blocks in the last quarter of 2010, the overall picture of availability of mortgages in the world of buy to let lending still looks pretty subdued. It is not so much the level of interest rates (which are low by historic standards) that is the problem. Rather, it is the […]
Read moreAs soon as the last of turkey sandwiches have been consumed, the January 31st deadline for filing tax returns for the year ending the previous April 6th begins to loom and landlords start to think about preparing the dreaded tax return. One of the biggest deductions that they will all make will be the interest costs on their buy to […]
Read moreI hope you are not too bored by our coverage of the Housing Benefit story. If you are an organisation or public body and are providing / selling services or products to the private rented sector, you should still be riveted because it has big implications for the whole market. Even if you are a landlord who never lets to […]
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