The restrictions being put in place by the Lloyds Banking Group on buy-to-let property investors were reported by the Daily Mail?s website yesterday.
Incorporated under the Lloyds Banking Group banner are Lloyds TSB, Cheltenham & Gloucester, Bank of Scotland, Scottish Widows Bank, The Mortgage Business, Birmingham Midshires, Intelligent Finance and Halifax. All these brands will offer a restricted maximum of nine buy-to-let properties to investors, going forward.
Lloyds is also bringing a maximum loan for buy-to-let investors of ?3 million, to run alongside the cap of nine properties.
At the current time, brands under the Lloyds Banking Group offer mortgage investors up to 18 buy-to-let properties. Property investors with mortgages already from these lenders will be fine but investors wishing to increase their number of properties will be affected by this new restriction.
Commenting on the buy-to-let market at the moment, MoneySupermarket.com?s mortgage specialist, Hannah-Mercedes Skenfield said: ?New and existing buy-to-let landlords face a difficult task in finding a suitable mortgage. Our figures show nearly ten per cent of those looking for a mortgage are looking for a buy-to-let mortgage, but the number of products has fallen by over two-thirds compared to this time last year.?
A spokeswoman for Lloyds Banking Group said: ?Going forward, there will be one buy-to-let portfolio lending limit in place across all of the Lloyds Group. The existing criteria in place will now include all of our mortgage brands. Aligning the criteria in this way is the right thing to do, it allows us to manage portfolio lending consistently and effectively across the group.?
