54% of professional landlords have tried to secure a buy-to-let mortgage in the three months to the end of August for either remortgage or new purchase purposes.
And according to Paragon’s Trends research – a panel-based survey of UK landlords – almost nine out of 10 of those landlords suid that it was more difficult to secure a buy-to-let mortgage than in the previous quarter.
8.4% said that they had noticed no change in buy-to-let mortgage availability over the period, with 2.8% stating that they had found it slightly easier to secure a mortgage.
Buy-to-let product availability has continued to fall in recent months, in contrast to the residential market where availability has improved. There were 196 live buy-to-let products available at the end of August (a 94.4% reduction on August 2007), compared to 218 in May. This compares to 1,329 prime residential mortgage products available in August (an 86.1% reduction on August 2007 numbers), against 1,266 in May.
John Heron , Paragon Mortgages’ managing director, said: “Product availability in the general mortgage market has improved slightly in recent months