Darren Shaughnessy, Director Kings Residential, Estate Agents in Manchester  and Letting Agents in Manchester writes:

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) Announced that repossessions of mortgaged properties increased to 27,100 in 2007 up from 22,400 in 2006. Whilst there were more mortgaged properties in 2007 than in 2006 the repossession rate rose from 19 per 10,000 mortgaged properties in 2006 to 23 per 10,000 mortgaged properties in 2007.

The CML predicts that the rate will increase further in 2008.

My view is that they are probably right. Quite a few buy-to-let landlords have over stretched themselves and I think that 2008 is the year that repossessions of buy to let properties will peak. Some landlords have been funding their losses by re-mortgaging their properties. With the well publicised credit crunch biting hard re-mortgages of recently purchased buy to let properties will be harder to come by.

The days of using the mortgage lenders money to pay off the interest are over! Those property investors who have carefully planned their investments and take a long-term view of the market should do really well in the long-run.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 10th, 2008 at 12:18 am and is filed under Industry News and Comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.