How lenders cope with demands of BTL remortgage market
By LendInvest
2022 has already been a busy year for the remortgage market, with plenty of maturing business as a result of the 2017 PRA changes keeping lenders busy.
Here’s how lenders can meet the demands of the Buy-to-Let remortgage market for the rest of 2022 and onwards.
Technology showing the way
Lenders not hamstrung by monolithic back office systems have been able to absorb the changes the PRA and Government have thrown at them over the years.
Indeed the ability for LendInvest to bolt upgrades onto our application portal and develop further integrations that result in frictionless enhancements to our own underwriting processes has resulted in service levels being met even with more to consider in the underwrite now.
Keeping the personal touch is obviously essential, which is why we make our underwriters and case managers available throughout the deal, but lenders who have been willing to innovate around the challenges posed since 2017 will be best placed to support fast refinancing now.
A better landscape
Today landlords are faced with a looming deadline to improve the quality of their properties in the form of both emissions and efficiency.
A plethora of Green mortgage products linked to the EPC rating of a property are available with discounts on both rate and fee compared to a standard product.
Making these deals available to landlords who haven’t had to refinance their properties for 5 years is also important, which is why we offer even cheaper rates when a landlord uses our bridging finance to improve their EPC rating, with free valuation and legals in the transition as well.
Noting the economic outlook and soaring inflation the option of longer term products have proved appealing to landlords with the LendInvest 7- and 10-year fixed rate option seeing huge take up.
Managing portfolios
Landlords and brokers alike are benefitting from lenders' increased knowledge and awareness of the choices open to portfolio landlords, especially when it comes to how tax is treated.
Portfolio incorporations are commonplace and as a lender supporting the portfolio landlord, making these happen smoothly is built into our processes.
We don’t need to underwrite a whole portfolio in the 6 months after 1 deal, making mass remortgages simpler, and tools like Open Banking and E-Signatures cut down on the laborious task of going through each deal at a time.
An evolving market
A lot has changed in the Buy-to-Let market in the past five years, and the measure of a good lender will be how those changes have been managed, embraced and overcome so as to make the returning landlord experience better than it was before.
This year offers a chance for all lenders to benchmark themselves against those measures and for landlords there’s plenty of choice and much to consider when remortgaging this time around.
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