Inform 10th June 2022

As of Tuesday 7^th June, Keystone Property Finance raised their maximum LTV to 85% for the first time. The brand new 85% LTV loans are available on their standard range. All three products are available on loans of between £50,000 and £500,000.

Keystone has made many criteria and product upgrades so far this year, including offering seven-year fixed rates for the first time, improving their enhanced cashback offering and accepting HMO applications from first-time landlords. In April they also lifted their maximum portfolio size to £10m and its maximum individual loan size to £2m.

View Keystone’s product offering here.

If you have any questions or need any assistance with your case enquiries, Keystone’s Business Development Managers are there to help, call the broker hotline on 0345 148 9086 or email enquiry@keystonepropertyfinance.co.uk.

A repeat borrower, a joint venture, and a high-quality new development in London Zone 2. See how our team approached delivering the right funding for this 37-unit development.

Find out more here.

At Vantage Finance, we aim to streamline the buy-to-let journey to achieve success for you and your clients. Our access to an extensive panel of specialist lenders means we can quickly and efficiently deliver a suitable solution for your client’s situation.

We are experts in dealing with a range of complex scenarios, such as:

• Flats above commercial premises
• Portfolio incorporations
• Limited company applications
• Student let properties
• MUFBs – Multi-unit freehold blocks
• Ex-pat and foreign nationals landlords of varying profile
• Consumer buy-to-lets
• HMO – Houses in multiple occupation
• First-time landlords

If you would like more information click here: https://www.vantagefinance.co.uk/buy-to-let-mortgages

To discuss any cases please get in touch via email or give us a call today.

T: 01753 883195

E: enquiries@vantagefinance.co.uk

Join Jamie Page, Head of Strategic Partnerships at The Exeter, on Tuesday 21st June at 2pm where he’ll be turning up the volume on income protection. Jamie will start by looking at the opportunities within the market, common barriers to selling income protection, how you can confidently handle any objections and how their income risk calculator could be the answer to bringing your conversations to life. He’ll then move on to look at the different market segments and how this could be beneficial to your business. Finally, Jamie will look at the income protection solution The Exeter has to offer and how you can access dedicated support.

By the end of this session you will:

• Understand the opportunity within the income protection market.
• Be confident in objection handling and discussing your client’s biggest risks.
• Be able to offer suitable solutions to your client’s needs.

Register now

We’re only a couple of weeks away from the start of the brand new series of Skipton Talks and a return to a format we know our listeners and viewers love – webinars. Watch live as our hosts, Rachael Hunnisett and Derek Adams, talk to experts from across the intermediary mortgage market and discuss the latest news and views. Make sure you don’t miss a single episode by signing up today.

Book your place on the FREE webinars

What to expect from this series

We’ve got an exciting line up coming your way with topics including:

• Skipton’s Lending Criteria
• The effect of the cost of living crisis on affordability
• Consumer Duty rules
• How we can help First Time Buyers

See the rest of the schedule

Catch up On Demand

All episodes of Skipton Talks podcasts and webinars are available on our website. Catch up now to whet your appetite before the new series starts!

Watch all previous episodes

• Santander will only accept accountant’s certificates – not tax calculations (SA302s) and TYOs
• Use the business year-end salary and dividends for income assessment form the accountant’s certificate (not tax year-end figures)
• Use the income from the accountant’s certificate in the affordability calculator befre submitting an AIP or FMA to make sure you use the correct income and net pay figures.

Understand more

Paymentshield have launched a brand-new feature allowing you to requote your expired pending polices quickly and easily.

The latest enhancement means, that with the click of a button, you can open the old expired quote and it pre-populates all the previously entered data. All you need to do, is check it’s still up to date, before getting a brand-new quote for your customer.

This latest feature allows you to have peace of mind, that even if you’re away from the office, especially during the summer months, you can leave the policy to expire and quickly re-quote on your return.

Similarly, with new houses taking longer to complete, if you quoted at the start your client’s journey, the policy could go out of date and with this new enhancement it’s easy to get the ball rolling again.

Paymentshield’s Proposition Director Louise Pengelly comments:

“Requoting is one of those tasks that can create a lot of unnecessary work for advisers and when it comes to pending policies, we know it’s a common frustration. Moving dates, for example, often slip, which can take an existing quote for a pending policy beyond the validity period. We know that requoting a policy can take up to 15 minutes. That’s time of specialist labour spent simply re-entering details onto a platform when that time could have been put to better use elsewhere.

“When we first launched the Adviser Hub in 2018, we did it with the intention of setting new standards in the way intermediaries work with GI advisers – we’re now proud to say that we are offering an improvement that delivers on those exact intentions.”

Adviser Hub already provides a level of service you can’t get anywhere else, for example we’re already unique in enabling policies to be submitted with missing information such as bank details or a start date.

LOG INTO ADVISER HUB NOW

Short-term lets may be one of the fastest growing areas of the modern buy-to-let marketplace but it could also be described as one of the most overpriced, misunderstood and misrepresented in recent times.

There’s no getting away from the fact that the increased popularity of the UK ‘staycation’ is the primary driving force behind its recent rise in prominence. And, for the vast numbers of people caught up in the travel chaos over the Easter holidays which saw more than 1,000 flights being grounded at Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham, the appeal of a UK-based break may just have risen even further.

I wouldn’t say this airline turbulence was exactly good news but it certainly doesn’t harm landlords with short term lets sitting within their property portfolios and, if Mintel’s report on Domestic Tourism is anything to go by, it will come as no surprise to anyone to see activity intensify as we move into the summer months.

This report found that more than half (53%) of UK adults planned to take a domestic holiday in the 12 months that followed August 2021, with demand expected to surge from this spring onwards. The same report also discovered that 18% of those who plan to spend more of their holidays in the UK want to do it to limit their carbon footprint.

In addition, Mintel’s Family Holidays report showed that 14% of parents now see carbon reduction as one of their five top factors when considering their choice of family holiday. Adding to the focus on the environment, the Mintel research also found that 28% of British adults said they prioritise the environment more now than they did before the pandemic.

A further report by Euromonitor, issued late last year, showed that the self-contained accommodation sector – which includes short-term rentals – was ahead of other sectors in terms of the value of sales recovery for 2021. The report added that short-term rentals are forecast to be one of the key drivers of the UK’s recovery and the sector is expected to reach 2019 levels, of around £2.1bn, in 2022.

Of course, short-term let’s is not just about staycations. They offer access to flexible accommodation which can work for those who may be waiting for their new home to be constructed or refurbished after a previous sale, for contactors embarking upon projects away from home or a variety of other reasons.

For lenders, it’s all about providing flexibility and choice to meet the needs of landlords who are carefully evaluating their portfolios and looking to include property types such as short-term lets, HMOs and MUFB’s to bolster yields and diversify away from the more vanilla BTL properties. As such, here at CHL Mortgages, we recently entered the short-term let marketplace with the introduction of a new five-year fixed product range up to 75% LTV comprising of dual fee bands to help provide landlords with more control over upfront costs.

Historically speaking, landlords had to pay a hefty premium for such products. I suspect these premiums have led to some landlords not always divulging the short-term letting aspect of some properties to lenders, despite the security for the lender being the same. Meaning any official statistics are also likely to represent an under estimation of the true number.

Increased competition, options and control are key elements in helping to ensure that landlords are classifying their investment types ‘properly’ and this remains an area which lenders and intermediaries should be monitoring closely moving forward.

Andy Valvona, National Account Manager, CHL Mortgages

We’re doing some research to identify and better understand the needs of our customers and how we can best help you, our broker partners, as we all plan for a greener future.

We would be grateful if you would take a moment to complete our short survey to let us know what you’re currently seeing in the market and what additional support you would benefit from.

Please click the button below to start the survey. Thank you for your participation!

Take the survey

Over three million Brits missed a payment during the last couple of years, and the total number of people with adverse credit is about twice that. That’s a big – and growing – chunk of the adult population that isn’t being served by the mainstream mortgage industry.

We believe this market – about 12% of the adult population – deserves a chance at home ownership, or a decent remortgage deal. And our flexible, responsive approach means we can help you to help them, delivering a potentially massive boost to your business.

We’ve just published an in-depth research report on adverse credit, what it means for your potential customers, and what you can do about it.

It tells you:

• Why millions of Brits have no idea what their credit score is
• What triggers adverse credit in the eyes of lenders
• Why the problem hits the young and self-employed the hardest
• How specialists like The Mortgage Lender are best equipped to serve this growing market.

You can read our report now!

While the pandemic may have accelerated the rise of staycations in the UK, there are a number of other factors at play that suggest the boom in staycations are here to stay from Brexit to a rise in sustainable tours! Here, West One look at some of the potential benefits of investing in a holiday let…

• The cost of furnishing a holiday rental can be deducted from the pre-tax profits.
• Self-catering accommodation may be subject to Business Rate property tax, which would allow the investor to claim small business rate relief, instead of paying council tax.
• If an investor decides to sell their property, they will be able to claim certain Capital Gains Tax reliefs including Entrepreneur’s Relief, Business Asset Rollover Relief and Gift Hold-Over Relief.
• Income generated from a holiday rental is classed as ‘relevant earnings’ which means you can make contributions towards your pension and reduce your income tax bill.
• Married couples can divide the profits from a furnished holiday let however they choose, regardless of the ownership split.
• There is the potential for higher profit margins as the daily and weekly charges for holiday lets are considerably higher than traditional buy-to-lets.

Financing a holiday-let with West One

Our specialist buy-to-let product range is available for existing or first-time landlords wishing to finance holiday lets in their personal names or through a limited company SPV.

Key features of our Holiday Let mortgages:

• We lend to first time landlords with no holiday letting experience.
• Available to individuals, limited companies, and expats.
• No minimum income.
• We can accommodate short term lets and serviced accommodation (Airbnb) which means the property does not have to be in a typical holiday destination.
• Holiday lets are assessed on an AST rental basis.
• The property must be suitable for standard AST rental.

If you have a client looking to purchase or remortgage a holiday buy-to-let, please contact your BDM or the broker support team on 0333 123 4556 or email btlbrokersupport@westoneloans.co.uk.