Sedgwick said education is needed to help brokers understand specialist areas. Vida provides webinars, workshops and regional blogs by key account managers.
The main growth areas in the mortgage market are specialist residential and buy-to-let, Louisa Sedgwick, director of sales for mortgages at Vida Homeloans, has argued.
Sedgwick said education is needed to help brokers understand specialist areas. Vida provides webinars, workshops and regional blogs by key account managers.
One area Vida has seen an uplift in is expat buy-to-let since the 2016 EU Referendum.
Sedgwick said: “Any growth in the market has to come from the specialist area and the more education there is, the greater the market will grow. We’re trying to find different ways of educating brokers.
“Before we voted to leave prices were more expensive and since the vote have dropped, making the property market more vulnerable.”
Payam Azadi, director of Niche advice, agreed and said he’d done more expat buy-to-let business this year than previous years.
He added: “As lenders start looking for more margin and diversifying their proposition, they’re going to be going into the more specialist sectors.
“We have seen a lot of lenders diversify firstly into specialist buy-to-let, for example, lending on houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) and expat buy-to-let, but there’s also other sectors lenders have moved into.
“There’s another batch of lenders looking to loosen criteria around adverse credit and others looking at affordability. There are a number of strategies from different lenders. It depends on how they’re funded and what the funders’ risk models are and what margin lenders have to give back to their funders.
“Within the specialist market margins are under pressure, so it’s great saying you’re going into this sector but it’s about how much money you can make there. You’ve seen lenders look at different areas to give edge over competition.”
