Buy-to-let mortgage market 'will not return to full health until 2012'
An expert has said the buy-to-let mortgage market will not return to pre-recession levels until 2012.Landlords seeking buy-to-let home credit packages in the near future might be disappointed to note one expert believes that area of the mortgage market could take another two years to return to health.
According to Lee Grandin, director of Landlord Mortgages, banks and building societies are unlikely to significantly increase the competitiveness of their rates on such products like buy-to-let tracker mortgage deals until "well into 2012".
Mr Grandin believes that the country's financial sector is still struggling in the aftermath of the global economic downturn which means that lenders are not going to be willing to return to pre-recessionary mortgage offers for the foreseeable future, despite the fact that they are eager to re-attract people to the market.
This would seem to be at odds with data published yesterday (September 20th) by Mortgages for Business, which stated that there has been an increase of 396 per cent in the number of buy-to-let home credit packages available in Britain in the recent past.
David Whittaker, managing director of the company, remarked that this represents a stark contrast from May 2009, when there were just 40 such products on the market.
"[This is] something we haven't seen for three years," he added.
Meanwhile, the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) released a report last month showing that the number of buy-to-let mortgages taken out in the second quarter of the year was 24,900 - some 13 per cent higher than the previous three-month period.
However, Mr Grandin maintained that the UK's fiscal sector is still "in the dumps" after the recession and added that even though the figures from Mortgages for Business and the CML display the fact that there is now some more fluidity in the sector, it nevertheless remains "very restricted".
He concluded that the whole economy needs to pick up before mortgages are freely available once again.