Santander enters buy-to-let market
Posted by Jane Codling
Those thinking about making a UK property investment could benefit from the news that Santander is to enter the buy-to-let mortgage market.
The lender has announced that it is to offer buy-to-let mortgages for the first time, through its intermediary brand Abbey for Intermediaries.
Aimed at non-professional landlords, the new mortgages will only be on offer to borrowers who already have a residential or buy-to-let mortgage, but no more than three buy-to-let properties overall.
Lending will be available for those purchasing or remortgaging one or two buy-to-let properties on a two-year fixed rate basis at up to 75 per cent loan-to-value (LTV).
Rates start at 4.29 per cent with a £1,495 fee for 60 per cent LTV, to 5.19 per cent with a £1,495 fee for 75 per cent LTV.
"As we are looking to attract non-professional landlords, we have developed a new buy-to-let property self-financing calculator on our website, so you can make sure that the landlord has fully considered the costs of the new property and that we would consider the new property affordable," added Abbey.
Santander has become the latest of a number of lenders to announce they are either returning to the buy-to-let market or entering it for the first time, ultimately leading to greater choice and more competitive rates for landlords.
In March this year, Skipton Building Society re-entered the buy-to-let market, after withdrawing from the sector two years ago at the height of the credit crisis, while Yorkshire Building Society launched its first range of mortgages for landlords in August.
Meanwhile, David Whittaker, managing director at Mortgages for Business, recently predicted that buy-to-let lending will increase further in 2012.
"In a market where the UK residential mortgage market itself might be soft, buy-to-let could be a higher percentage of it in quarter four and going into 2012," he said.
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