"These new products provide professional landlords with more options to navigate one of the toughest challenges in the market – meeting affordability assessments and interest cover ratios"
- Daryl Norkett - Shawbrook
In a higher interest rate environment with evolving customer needs and changing market dynamics, it has become more difficult for landlords to achieve their required loan-to-value in order to refinance lower-yielding properties or have enough deposit capital to grow their portfolios.
Shawbrook’s changes to its buy-to-let offering have been released to provide more choice and access to larger loan sizes, supporting more investors looking to build and grow throughout 2024.
The new, limited edition five-year fixed rate product, available on loans between £150k to £25m, features a 50bps reduction on the standard five-year fixed product up to 75% LTV, with rates starting from 6.09%.
Alongside the five-year fixed rate product, the new, limited edition two-year fixed rate, also available on loans between £150k to £25m, features a 110bps reduction on the standard two-year fixed rate product, with rates starting from 5.59% up to 70% LTV. Compared to Shawbrook’s standard product, available loan sizes are up to 8% larger.
The new products carry an arrangement fee of 5%.
Alongside the new limited edition product, Shawbrook has reintroduced “top slicing”, where a client’s additional income may be considered as part of the affordability assessment. For borrowers with additional surplus income alongside their investment property, this returning product feature will facilitate a larger loan size than would otherwise be available using the property rental income in isolation.
For those investors looking to start growing their property portfolio, or experienced buy-to-let investors who wish to diversify to potentially improve yield performance, the lender has removed the need for previous experience when funding small HMOs.
Daryl Norkett, Director of Real Estate Proposition at Shawbrook, commented: “In light of interest rate volatility and higher mortgage rates, property investors have had to adapt their business models to thrive in tougher trading conditions.
“These new products provide professional landlords with more options to navigate one of the toughest challenges in the market – meeting affordability assessments and interest cover ratios.
“As we look forward to more good news for property investors in 2024, we continue to evolve our proposition to cater for an ever-wider range of landlords needs, whether that’s options to refinance lower yielding properties, maximise loan to values for new purchases, or access to shorter term fixed rates.”
