Buy-to-let financing in UK evaporates

[AtW]

I thought Jungle were bought out by Argos.

Desperate bought outs never end up well, especially if new management and IT teams have no clue and buy into centures of this world.

[Clippy]

Yes. We had some good people working there, web team was pleasure to deal with, really annoying that we ended up going bust because of poor management decisions.

I thought Jungle were bought out by Argos.

[AtW]

Jungle?

Yes. We had some good people working there, web team was pleasure to deal with, really annoying that we ended up going bust because of poor management decisions.

[Sockpuppet]

Jungle? Not like I read your CV or owt.


You might want to take the shading off the title

[AtW]

So you didn't want to buy one well before the peak of the bubble either?

I was considering buying house in 2000 with my stock options that should have made me wealthy, at the time I worked in a .COM and we were supposed to float in June, unfortunately the market burst in April/May so we all got shafted. Since then the only shares I trust are those that I fully control

Also I could not really buy because I was not sure if I won't have to leave country due to inability to renew visa, you know it is a bit hard to plan long term when you don't have long term right to stay in country - owned house was not a good enough reason to get permanent visa, unless you buy one of those multi-million houses in Chelsea.

[Sockpuppet]

The only way is down.

Went looking at houses earlier today - mostly new builds. The amount of bargaining they are prepared to do was shocking. They were starting to talk about 10% deposit paid or 10% off the price (all ends up being the same mortgage price) just lower Stamp on the 10% off price.

Thinking that a lot of them can come down to 25% off before we start chewing the cud.

[sasguru]

Why would I want to buy a house at the top of the bubble? I did not want to buy it few years ago and I certainly won't do it now!

So you didn't want to buy one well before the peak of the bubble either?
And as you have no credit history you won't be able to buy one at the bottom of the next cycle, either.

[AtW]

Bang goes your sole chance of owning a home, then

Why would I want to buy a house at the top of the bubble? I did not want to buy it few years ago and I certainly won't do it now!

[sasguru]

[b]
Subprime buy-to-let mortgages, which cater for investors with blemished credit records, have virtually ceased to exist.

..

Bang goes your sole chance of owning a home, then

[AtW]

Buy-to-let financing in UK evaporates
By Sharlene Goff

Financing for buy-to-let investors is drying up as lenders slash funding for deals and tighten loan criteria.

The total number of buy-to-let mortgages on offer to borrowers has almost halved since July after an explosion in recent years of products that helped fuel the UK residential property boom, according to market research from Moneyfacts.co.uk.

Subprime buy-to-let mortgages, which cater for investors with blemished credit records, have virtually ceased to exist.

There are now only 18 available in the market for such borrowers compared with 1,383 five months ago, according to Moneyfacts. For prime borrowers, the number of products has dropped from 2,265 in July to 1,724.

Landlord Mortgages, a buy-to-let broker, said only two or three big lenders were taking on any sizeable amount of new business.

“We can’t see any significant input from 90 per cent of buy-to-let mortgage lenders,” said Lee Grandin, managing director. “The past two years have brought an enormous influx of buy-to-let lenders to the market but this has been dramatically wiped out in the past two months.”

Those lenders still active in the market have introduced blanket rate rises, increased deposit requirements and cut the amounts they are willing to lend.

Only a few lenders are willing to lend more than 90 per cent of a property’s value. The margin by which rent must cover mortgage payments has also been raised by a number of lenders.

Buy-to-let investors are also being stalled by lenders taking a more cautious view to property valuations. Liam Bailey, head of residential research at Knight Frank, said that one in ten larger sales were being delayed because lenders had valued the property at less than the asking price.

Platform, the specialist lender of Britannia Building Society, is withdrawing from the buy-to-let market on Monday. A number of other lenders, such as Northern Rock, Paragon, and GMAC, have pushed rates high enough to virtually – and deliberately – price themselves out of the market, according to broker John Charcol.

Lenders have also reduced how much they will lend in total or as a proportion of property value. Alliance & Leicester slashed the amount it will lend a single borrower from £1m to £250,000.

GMAC introduced a maximum loan-to-value of just 70 per cent while Northern Rock is reducing its maximum loan-to-value on buy-to-let properties from 80 per cent to 75 per cent on Monda

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The end is high (yeah I know it's nigh, but high sounds better)...