Paul Hunt, head of marketing at Platform, highlights the issue in this week’s MI and said: “If rental income could be displayed, which would be a fairly basic calculation, the broker would know that, for example, for a loan of £200,000 a certain minimum rental income would be required.”
Barbara Goldsmith, managing director of Stratford Properties, said for brokers who write a lot of BTL business, the addition would be valuable. “It is an excellent idea and would save intermediaries a lot of extra time calculating the various income requirements. Each lender is different, their requirements change over time and this would be a helpful way of keeping brokers on top of the current situation,” she explained.
Mark Lofthouse, chief executive of sourcing system Mortgage Brain, said this kind of system would soon be live. “We will shortly be releasing an enhanced version of Mortgage Brain which takes minimum rental income into account, although not in the way Platform has suggested. We have added a filter so only BTL products available at the particular income value will be displayed,” he said.
Bill Safran, chief executive officer at Trigold, said it is looking to create a more advanced BTL sourcing tool along the lines of its enhanced non-conforming facility.
He said: “Trigold does have this capability but not on an extremely advanced level. We calculate from rental income but go off current pay rather than the reverting rate. BTL business has boomed over the last year and we’re looking to develop a more advanced tool to respond to this.”
· See ‘Lender viewpoint’ on page 42.
