Fleet Mortgages has reintroduced its range of products for landlord borrowers seeking to purchase or refinance properties with an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of A-C, and it has cut pricing on a number of five-year fixes.
The relaunched EPC A-C products are offered across Fleet’s three core product ranges, standard, limited company and HMO/multi-unit blocks, and are priced 10 basis points below its equivalent five-year products, offering a price incentive for borrowers on these more energy-efficient properties.
The standard and limited company products are available up to 75% LTV at a price of 4.69%, while the HMO/MUB product is offered at 5.09%. All EPC A-C products come with a fee of 3%, with a minimum of £750.
Fleet also continues to offers its £1,000 cashback incentive to landlord borrowers who improve the EPC level of their property to a C or above during the course of their initial fixed-rate period.
The lender said this relaunch, along with the cashback incentive, was designed to incentivise landlords when it came to bringing higher EPC properties into their portfolios and on to the private rental sector, and to help them fund any changes required to existing properties which did not currently meet these levels.
Fleet has also cut rates by 20 basis points on its existing five-year fixed-rate products with a 3% fee. The standard and limited company products are now available at 4.79%, while the HMO/MUB product is available at 5.19%; all up to a 75% LTV.
Steve Cox, chief commercial officer at Fleet Mortgages, said: “Energy-efficiency of rental properties is a significant issue and will continue to be as landlords are expected to meet new Government-set minimum standards of C and above by the end of the decade.
“Clearly, we want to put in place incentives across the board for landlords to not just improve those properties that don’t currently meet these levels, but to also reward those with lower pricing in order to benefit further from this.
“These relaunched EPC A-C products are very competitively priced and are also 10 basis points below our five-year fixed-rate equivalents, making it worth landlords’ while to be either purchasing or refinancing properties at these higher EPC standards.
“At the same time, we’ve also been able to cut rates on our five-year fixes with a 3% fee by a healthy 20 basis points, providing advisers and their landlord borrowers with lower rates and a further opportunity to meet affordability criteria and secure the level of loans they want and need.
“It is a busy time in the buy-to-let sector with a large number of market moves and new opportunities and we would urge advisers with landlord borrower clients to contact the Fleet sales team so we can outline the positive solutions we can help them deliver.”