Lenders Returning To Market
The credit crunch has taken its toll on the lending market as a whole, but particularly on those loan companies and lenders which offered loans in specialist areas, with many lenders limiting their products or withdrawing from the loan market altogether and some completely closing down.
But as we slowly start to see the beginnings of some signs of recovery in the home owner loan markets, it is nice to see a couple of specialist loan providers, who had previously disappeared from the market, have returned to start offering loans once again. Both Paragon Mortgages and Kensington Mortgages had both been hit particularly hard by the credit crunch, forcing them to withdraw from lending, but have now announced that they will start to offer loans once more.
Paragon mortgages specialise in buy to let loans and were forced to stop offering loans to new customers over two years ago, due to a lack of wholesale funding, although they still offered loans to those landlords with existing portfolio’s and switching facilities on existing buy to let loans. Due to an increase in their profit margins, Paragon are now able to return to the buy to let market, although they acknowledge that they will not be completing anywhere near the same number of loans as they were prior to the credit crunch.
Kensington Mortgages has also returned to lending, offering loans through intermediaries and loan brokers who are registered with the packagers Legal & General, Pink and Openwork. Prior to the credit crunch, Kensington specialised predominantly in the sub prime loan market, offering loans to borrowers with a poor credit record, possibly consisting of previous loan arrears and County Court Judgements (CCJ’s) for example, but their new product range focuses exclusively on the prime loan market, for those borrowers with a clean credit history only.
