The Council of Mortgage Lenders, CML, have released their latest report on the state of play in the property business and it has to be said that things are looking much rosier than many would have predicted.
The report finds, among other things, that the number of landlords behind in their repayments has significantly improved.
Loans in arrears of three months or more fell to 29,400 or 2.49% of all buy-to-let mortgages, down from 35,600 or 3.06% in the previous quarter. As well as that, 21,600 new loans were given out during Q2, up 5% on the previous three months.
Rob Thomas, a senior figure at CML had this to say “So long as properties have paying tenants, landlords now have much greater ability to service mortgage payments and we expect arrears to continue to fall as landlords are helped by lower interest rates.”
It is interesting to note that far fewer remortgages were taken out as landlords opted to stick with the lenders variable rate rather than locking themselves in at this stage.
Let’s hope that these exciting figures continue as it appears that landlords who have really felt the tough times with everyone else seem to be making a strong and welcome recovery. As well as being good for the buy to let market it can only be a positive sign for the economy as a whole.
