15 Dec Santander’s arrived for London’s Buy to Let Market
Santander this week launched into the UK buy to let market. This is great and exciting news.
Firstly it re-enforces the message that the UK property market is a safe place to invest and to lend into. Santander obviously are eyeing up some profits and good for them.
It will come as a surprise bearing in mind our overall feelings towards the banks, but we actually really like Santander. Whilst they have over the last few years centralised their centres (and there have been some moments along the way!) on the whole this has worked well.
You can talk to people at Santander. Real people. With brains. This makes a real difference when you are looking to get the lending decision you want.
Furthermore, whilst there have been some delays on this launch (ahem!), Santander are using their online system for Buy To Let. Usually on a new product launch from a lender we revert to some archaic paper based system, documents in the post and all that nonsense. This shows from them, commitment to the market and a grown up approach.
So seriously – thumbs up this week for Santander. This may be a gentle launch in terms of loan to value and rates, but we are excited by what it represents. We’ll see some buy to let action in London from Santander in 2012.
Footnote: There is of course an old industry joke that Santander have been doing buy to let for years – they just didn’t know it
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