Accord is the specialist arm of Yorkshire Building Society and products are only available through mortgage brokers. They have recently been focused on delivering some extremely competitive residential mortgages (including innovative products such as flexible fixed) so it was quite exciting news for financial advisers to see them announce their return to the buy to let mortgage market as their products are likely to be extremely competitive.
Accord Mortgages Launches in London and South East
Initially, our service will only be available for properties in London and the south east – we’re looking to roll it out to the rest of England and Wales later this year.
Buy to let landlords across the United Kingdom can therefore look forward to the usual highly competitive rates from Accord as well as a rental calculation at 125%. This is broadly comparable with most lenders and the rate used for the calculation will be 5% (or the product rate if higher).
As a lender that is currently focussing on ‘prime’ cases in the residential market it’s unlikely we’ll see the kind of aggressive innovation lenders such as Kensington – who offer 85% Buy to Let – from Accord. What we will see is aggressive pricing and a lender that keeps a very keen eye on their competition to make sure they are rarely priced too far from the mark.
Ready to learn more about the Buy to Let process? Kindly fill out the form below and one of our live representatives will contact you!
Accord Mortgage Criteria – Feature Summary
After a quick read through the Accord mortgage lending criteria a couple of things stand out. Firstly the fact that they are targeting the more buoyant South East and London signals a cautious approach to lending. This is coupled with the fact that the minimum age of applicants is thirty and a first time landlord must be 35 years old. This is significantly more restrictive than their competition. On top of this one applicant will need to be earning £35,000. Most lenders require £10,000 less than this and some even can do buy to let with no income.
Most other criteria are pretty standard – maximum age at 75, minimum loan at £50,000 and the lender is clearly not looking to pick up many professional landlords with the number of properties restricted to three. Reading through the exclusions it would also appear that none of the more unusual types of property – such as HMO Properties – will be covered by Accord so expect a vanilla offering priced very competitively but professionals with a mix of unusual properties might have to look elsewhere. Limited Companies will also not be able to borrow from Accord.
