42% of property investors want manual underwriting process

MT Finance’s Q1 2019 property investor survey revealed that 42% of property investors claimed they had struggled to secure a mainstream BTL mortgage in the last 12 months.

The primary barrier to such funding was the affordability criteria (54%), followed by age restrictions (32%) and insufficient deposit capital (14%).

Other key points from the survey include:

• 46% of property investors who were unable to obtain a BTL mortgage filled their funding gap with other sources of liquidity, with 50% of those opting for bridging loans, 34% refinancing and 16% taking out a secured loan
• 58% of the 125 property investors surveyed did not think BTL lenders were doing enough to support them
• 36% of respondents said that a manual underwriting process for professional landlords from BTL lenders would better support them, followed by increasing LTV thresholds (32%) and relaxing age restrictions (26%)
   

Gareth Lewis, commercial director at MT Finance (pictured above), said: “The results from our Q1 2019 property investor survey reflects the impact of stricter affordability and stress testing from high street lenders on professional property investors’ ability to obtain mainstream funding.

“The need for reliable, transparent and quick access to funds is ever-critical and specialist finance — such as bridging loans — will continue to pick up when a more personalised approach to underwriting is required.”