It said the buy-to-let market is growing at a faster rate than traditional property buying and announced that it would continue in its plans to grow in the sector.
B&B also took a confident line on the state of the housing market, although it acknowledged that ‘property transaction levels and mortgage volumes have been running at monthly levels significantly below the same period last year.’
Nicola Severn, head of marketing at Mortgage Trust, said: “August’s interest rate cut was widely predicted by intermediaries and adds to a sense of cautious optimism in the buy-to-let sector.
“However, although intermediaries are positive about existing landlords continuing to invest, they don’t expect any uplift in the number of new entrants.”
B&B has reported that remortgage levels are disappointing. This is backed up by recent Council of Mortgage Lenders figures for June which showed remortgage levels fell for a sixth consecutive month.
Duncan Pownell, mortgage development manager of B&B, said: “Given the popularity of remortgaging over recent years and the fact many homeowners are increasingly rate aware, I would have expected remortgage levels to have been higher this year as hundreds of thousands of borrowers come to the end of their cheap fixed rate.”
Drew Wotherspoon, public relations manager at John Charcol, explained as many as 30 per cent of the UK’s mortgage borrowers are effectively turning down a 10 per cent pay rise by not remortgaging from their lender’s SVR.
He said: “Remortgaging has become more and more prevalent in the UK market but there is still some way to go. No matter how many times some consumers read about the savings they could make, they will still sit on their hands and do nothing.”
