Ipswich Building Society has announced the withdrawal of all its buy-to-let products with immediate effect amid a "record pipeline in applications”.
In its announcement yesterday (July 6) the building society said that expat BTL and holiday let mortgages would also be withdrawn.
According to the society, it was seeking to “service the enquiries it has already received and meet its desired response times, having reached a record pipeline in applications”.
It comes after the lender withdrew its five-year standard BTL and five-year expat BTL fixed-rate products last month (June 18), followed by the withdrawal of its two-year fixed-rate products for expat BTL and holiday let on June 30.
Ipswich Building Society said despite previous product withdrawals, it had continued to experience a “high volume” of cases and that its BTL products were in particular “now attracting above the desired number of applications”.
The building society will continue to accept decisions in principle (DIPs) on any of its withdrawn products until 5pm on July 7.
It said there was no deadline to submit a fully packaged mortgage application where a DIP had already been submitted for these deals.
Richard Norrington, CEO at Ipswich Building Society, said: “This is a temporary measure to steady applications and we will be looking to come back into the buy-to-let market as soon as possible. We will also prioritise reinstating 90 per cent LTV deals as we are very aware of the lack of choice for buyers with smaller deposits.”
Last month lenders temporarily withdrew products at 90 per cent LTV to protect service after high demand. Yesterday lender Accord withdrew its first time buyer 90% LTV products for the second time in a month after seeing demand "surge".
Ipswich Building Society temporarily withdrew its 90 per cent LTV fixed rate products on June 10, before it withdrew its 90 per cent LTV discount mortgage last week (June 30) for both purchase and remortgage cases.
Akhil Mair, managing director at Our Mortgage Broker, commented: "Over the last four months the mortgage market has come under pressure with payment holidays, remote working, managing existing pipelines and new business enquiries.
"As an independent mortgage brokerage, we have found the banks and lenders have been proactive with product removals and additions with timely notifications by email.
"Most of the lenders are finding their feet we are seeing and we are finding that the vast majority are enhancing their product offering with incentives and the turnaround from application to mortgage offer is being reduced positively."
chloe.cheung@ft.com
