Buy-to-let mortgage deals nosedive

One in 10 mortgages has been pulled during the past 24 hours following the nationalisation of Bradford & Bingley, figures showed.

The number of buy-to-let loans has nosedived, with just 481 different deals now available, a 27% fall on Monday's figure of 662, financial information group Moneyfacts said.

The total is also a far cry from the 3,648 different mortgages that investment landlords could choose from in July last year before the credit crunch first struck.

The wider mortgage market did not escape the cull, with the number of residential mortgages available sliding from 3,252 on Monday, to 2,988 on Tuesday.

Michelle Slade, analyst at Moneyfacts.co.uk, said: "Monday saw one of the largest declines in mortgage products ever seen in a day, with 11.4% of products being culled. At the start of Monday there were 3,914 mortgage products on the market, on Tuesday there are just 3,469.

"The buy-to-let sector has been hardest hit since the turmoil began with 85% of products being withdrawn in a year, but residential mortgages are not far behind with a loss of 60% of products."

She added that it seemed as if lenders were "slowly turning the tap off" on the number of mortgage products available and their appetite to lend.

The steep decline in buy-to-let loans has been triggered by Bradford & Bingley and its subsidiary Mortgage Express pulling their 27 loans from the market following its nationalisation. The group had been the biggest lender in the sector.

But Nationwide's buy-to-let arms The Mortgage Works and UCB have also temporarily withdrawn their entire range following unprecedented demand.

At the same time BM Solutions, part of the HBOS group, has removed three-quarters of its deals from the market to return to what it described as its "core product range".

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