Moneyfacts reported yesterday that lenders have withdrawn approximately 1,500 mortgage products from the market between 9 March and late March. Average rates have climbed roughly 0.4% in March alone despite the Bank holding at 3.75%. The driver is clearly the geopolitical risk repricing following the Iran conflict rather than any domestic monetary policy shift. Anyone currently mid-application should check their product is still available before assuming terms are unchanged.
The rate hold is increasingly academic when lenders are repricing off swap rates and geopolitical risk rather than base rate. BTL products were already sparse before this week. I had a look on the comparison sites yesterday and the number of five year fixes available for landlords with 75% LTV has roughly halved since February, from recollection. The ones that remain have all crept up. So we are in a position where the government is piling on new regulatory costs with the Renters Rights Act while simultaneously the mortgage market is making it more expensive to hold the properties. At some point the arithmetic stops working and more landlords exit, which presumably makes the rental supply problem worse. But nobody in government seems to join those dots.