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Landlord News
January 16, 2015 | Landlord News
Research from specialist broker Mortgages for Business shows that fewer UK landlords are looking for longer term fixed rate mortgages because the shorter term loans are offering much lower deals. With the Bank of England having allayed fears of an imminent rise in interest rates, investors are keen to lock into a cheap fixed rate mortgage while the going is good.
But despite cheaper borrowing costs, the research found that 73% of landlords would like buy-to-let lenders to relax their lending criteria, up from 47%. In addition, 64% of landlords said that lenders should be doing more to support property investors, up from 58%.
The final quarter of 2014 saw the proportion of landlords favouring two-year fixed rate mortgages rise to 23%, an increase of 11% from the first quarter of the year. The proportion of property investors preferring to fix their mortgage repayments for three years rather than two fell from 21% to 15%.
The proportion of property investors looking for five-year deals fell from 34% in Q1 2014 to 31% in Q4 2014.
Demand for vanilla buy-to-let property increased by 1%, while demand for other types of property fell considerably. This suggests that, while 55% of landlords are planning to expand their portfolio in 2015, they are increasingly interested in lower risk investments.