Pick-up in buy-to-let loan sector

By The Newsroom
Published 13th Aug 2011, 07:00 BST
BUY-TO-LET lenders approved mortgages worth £3.5bn between April and July in the sector’s busiest quarter since the 2008 financial crisis.

There were 32,000 loans in the quarter, although the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said its figures still showed the market is running at around one third of the level seen at the peak of lending in 2007.

Demand from buy-to-let investors has picked up in recent months as tight mortgage availability has caused the rental market to strengthen. However, the CML pointed out that remortgaging accounted for 65 per cent of the overall increase in buy-to-let lending in the quarter.