Paragon lent £856.6m for buy-to-let, up from £359.8m the year before, making pre-tax profits of £80.5m in the process.
And the lender revealed that there has been little let up in demand going forward, as by the end of September its pipeline of new business was valued at £414.8m, up from £231.9m last year.
Paragon Group, Paragon Mortgages’ parent company, saw pre-tax profits rise by 18.1% to £122.2m compared to 103.5m last year.
John Heron, managing director of Paragon Mortgages, said: “Over the last 12 months we have seen strong growth in our buy-to-let business, with completions increasing by more than 80%.
“This has been made possible by the improved scale and cost of our funding which has allowed us to deliver more attractive products for the benefit of our landlord customers and the intermediary market.
“Paragon Mortgages continues to be a significant part of the group and contributed £80.5m to pre-tax profits – a 14.5% increase on the previous year.
“Looking ahead, we expect strong and increasing tenant demand to continue to drive high levels of growth for buy-to-let mortgages and Paragon will be at the centre of the development of innovative solutions and competitive pricing in this market.”
The credit quality of Paragon’s £8.6bn buy-to-let portfolio also remained high, with arrears levels falling by 0.10% year-on-year to stand at 0.25%; significantly below the CML’s market average of 0.69% in Q3 2014.
