Steve Matthews and Phil Riches spoke about innovation in mortgages and specialist lending at MBE Bristol.
Lenders need to be more creative after changes to interest coverage ratio (ICR)in January says Steve Matthews, head of mortgages at Bath Building Society.
At this year’s Bristol MBE event, as part of a panel discussion about innovations in mortgages and the specialist market, Matthews argues that niches are becoming more of a focus for business; particularly holiday lets, HMOs, and limited companies.
Phil Riches from Keystone Property Finance agreed with these points, and added that new changes in September are going to add further complications to the market which need to be prepared for.
The transiency of the population made figures hard to predict for the pair when asked about first-time buyers, however Riches claimed that figures overall tend to be rising thanks to the help-to-buy scheme.
The 5-year fix within the buy-to-let market was argued to be standard in the buy-to-let market thanks to stress rate calculations byRiches, who also predicted that longer-term fixes would increase in popularity amongst landlords over the coming months.
Talking to the people you know was not a mantra Matthews stuck to in the discussion, claiming that in the changing buy-to-let market talking to people you don’t know is an effective strategy as “you never know what they could do”.
