Landlords are spending on average £6,003 each year on local services with electricians (52%), plumbers (50%) and handymen (34%) topping the list when it comes to maintenance issues.

Meanwhile, many landlords are opting to shop local for a wider variety of professional services with around one in seven (15%) opting to use local interior designers and structural engineers, while a similar amount (14%) use local architects.

Landlords say that the main reason for using local services is their desire to support the local economy, while a third (34%) shop local because they trust local services.

For almost a third of landlords (32%) local tradespeople provide a deeper insight into the local area and, in turn, can give them better advice. 

However, in a challenging economic environment, three in five landlords (59%) are looking to downsize their portfolio due to a combination of high interest rates, falling house prices, regulation changes and cost-of-living pressures. 

Almost two thirds (63%) of landlords are finding it harder to be a landlord this year compared to 12 months ago.  

This comes at a time when demand for rental accommodation is high, with 73% of landlords seeing an increase in tenant demand for their property in the last year. 

While some landlords would like to expand their portfolio, 64% are unable to due to market conditions. 

Aldermore suggests that with landlords considering divesting from the market, the private rental sector could see greater strain. 

Almost 70% of landlords believe private landlords exiting the market will hurt the quality of properties available while 71% feel the private rental sector is essential to meet the UK’s housing demand.

Aldermore head of mortgages Jon Cooper says: “Amid a backdrop of ongoing market challenges – from high interest rates through to regulation changes – some landlords are considering downsizing their portfolios.”

“However, there will be plenty of larger-scale, professional landlords that will instead look to purchase more BTL properties. This should, over time, provide useful ballast to the private rental sector.”

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Brightstar is holding a variety of activities, which will include a lunch sponsored and hosted by specialist lender Together.

Brightstar says the focus of these activities will be the promotion of diversity in leadership and decision-making processes, something the group says it has championed for a numberof years and now benefits from as a result.  

It points out that historically, women have faced barriers in financial services when seeking leadership and higher-paid roles. It says it has sought to address this through dedicated programmes such as ‘Women into Management’ and ‘New Adviser Programme. Brightstar says these have boosted diversity across the business and led to better decision-making and innovation, as well as greater gender parity.

Brightstar Group chief people officer Clare Jupp says: “The Group continues to place a huge emphasis on diversity and inclusion in its entirety and our observance of International Women’s Day is a key event in our ongoing commitment to this. 

“We are proud of what our women contribute and achieve across our Brightstar, Sirius and Solstar businesses, and it is easy for women joining the business to identify role models and find inspiration from the career journeys and achievements of our women.”

Elsewhere Finova is launching its first-ever Women’s Network — an initiative designed to recognise and amplify the contributions of its female workforce, and create a pathway towards leadership positions. 

This network will introduce mentorship programmes and facilitate workshops and training sessions to enhance skills, empower confidence and prepare women for career advancement and leadership roles within the organisation.

Finova says this network will also promote inclusive and safe spaces where women can connect, share experience and build a strong support system.

Meanwhile, lifetime mortgage lender Pure Retirement has sought to shine a spotlight on is female customer base, for IWD, to enhance broker understanding of this important demographic.

It points out that women now make up 64% of all singe life applicants. Its in-depth profiling revealed that almost half of these customer were widowed, 31% were divorced and 16$ were unamrried. Across this cohort the majority (56%) of these female customer opted for a lump sum plan, rather than drawdown. 

Around 27% of female single life applicants used released funds for home improvements in 2023, with 20% releasing equity to repay debts or mortgages, and 10% electing to gift to friends or family. 

Pure’s head of mortgage services Suzanne Latimer says this data highlighted the diverse range of female equity release applicants. “While there’s been considerable research around the retirement provision gulf among men and women, property remains a key tool at the disposal of women to access the life they want, and it’s good to see informed consumers electing to access that underlying wealth to achieve their financial goals in later life across a range of circumstances.”

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Joy has 35 years’ industry experience, having worked most recently as sales and marketing director at the TM Group, the property data and technology business. He was also one of the three founding directors of Conveyancing Data Services. 

In his new role Joy will take responsibility improving the conveyancing experience for customers and developing and growing the Smoove business, following the departure of the outgoing CEO. He will report into the UK CEO, Joe Pepper.

UK CEO Joe Pepper says this appointment would help grow the Smoove business. He adds that the firms was looking to develop a combined Pexa and Smoove proposition to help speed up the home-buying process.  

Pexa continues to scale its proposition in the UK as it seeks to streamline the property transaction process. 

Having launched a payment system in September 2022, resulting in the UK’s first ever digitally enabled remortgage transaction, it has since established its UK headquarters in Leeds, following its acquisition of conveyancing firm Optima Legal in December 2022. It completed the acquisition of Smoove, providing access to more than 75 conveyancer firms through Smoove’s platform, in addition to another 2,100 firms through Smoove’s role arranging panels for lenders across the UK market.

Joy says he was looking forward to the opportunity to work on innovative projects that will help change the house buying process. 

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This integration will enable brokers in the UK to access a range of tools including April’s affordability calculator and criteria policy pages, streamlining the application process for both brokers and borrowers. 

April Mortgages is backed by The Hauge-based DMFCO asset management, and has recently launched a range of longer-term fixed rate remortgage products in the UK, with terms of up to 15 years. 

This partnership has seen Mortgage Brain adapt its technology to ensure it meets the needs of April’s lending model.

April’s affordability calculator, which is powered by Mortgage Brain’s technology, enables brokers to quickly assess a borrower’s financial situation and determine their mortgage eligibility from April’s website. 

Additionally, April is also available via ‘Affordability Brain’ which checks affordability calculations from over 30 lenders, accounting for around 85% of first charge residential mortgage lending in the UK. 

Criteria policy pages provide brokers with immediate access to detailed information on April’s lending criteria, helping them find the most suitable mortgage products for their clients. 

Earlier this month April Mortgages launched a series of longer-term fixed rate remortgage products to brokers in the Stonebridge and HLP networks. 

Mortgage Brain sales and marketing director Neil Wyatt welcomed the new partnership. “This collaboration exemplifies our commitment to driving innovation in the mortgage industry and empowering brokers with the tools they need to succeed.”

April Mortgages commercial director Tim Hague adds: “The integration of Mortgage Brain’s technology into our website is a critical ingredient for April and our support for our broker partners. 

“We’re committed to making mortgages more simple and by providing brokers with access to our affordability calculator and searchable criteria policy pages, we are streamlining the mortgage application process, delivering a superior experience for brokers and borrowers alike.”

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Waterhouse joins from Paragon Banking group where he worked for 12 years as a BTL mortgage underwriter.

In this new role he will be responsible for Landbay’s relationships with intermediaries and other key partners across the region, with a focus on supporting continued growth. 

Landbay sales and distribution director Rob Stanton says Waterhouse’s experience of specialist underwriting will give confidence to intermediaries as he moves into the business development role. He adds that this appointment should help Landbay consolidate and grow to be the BTL lender of choice across the region. 

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The lender says this creates an opportunity to make transactions quicker, more transparent, and easier for buyers and sellers.

This comes as less than 1% of property data is openly available in a digital format.

OPDA’s aim is for every that’s part of the mortgage and property chain to share open data in a digital, standardised, and trusted format.

LBG will support the association in developing transparent data sharing practices, raising standards, creating a best practice across the property industry.

Members of LBG’s leadership and technology teams will work alongside OPDA’s executive committee.

LBG will support OPDA’s latest framework for property data standards.

The framework is a standardised set of data and governance principles that includes a common data dictionary, a standardised way to describe property attributes and a methodology for sharing data with trust and provenance.

LBG will further support the ongoing development of the trust and interoperability framework.

The first stage of the new framework is freely available to the property industry and their software providers.

LBG head of strategic and technology partnership Claire Cherrington says: “We are right behind OPDA in their mission to change the way people buy and sell houses by implementing open data standards and encouraging transparent data sharing across the residential property sector.”

OPDA chair Maria Harris says: “Lloyds Banking Group joining us is a momentous step forward for open data sharing and a huge endorsement of our mission.”

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The new additions join AIG, Aviva, Legal & General, LV=, Royal London, and Vitality.

Stonebridge member firms have access to Guardian’s products including enhanced terminal illness definition on life protection, cover upgrade on its critical illness covers, optional children’s critical illness protection, dual life approach, own job definition of incapacity on income protection and premium waiver as standard on all covers.

In addition, advisers can recommend a choice of two life covers for their clients depending on whether quality or price is their priority.

Zurich recently enhanced its critical illness proposition offering customers bespoke packages of targeted cover.

The insurer offers three different levels of critical illness cover and two levels of children’s cover – where customers can select any amount of cover between £10,000 and £100,000.

Pregnancy and early childhood options can also be added for those looking to start a family. Each of the children’s cover options can be added to a life cover policy also.

Stonebridge said the addition of two more major insurers to the panel, further strengthened its overall protection proposition.

Stonebridge chief executive Rob Clifford says the additions of Guardian and Zurich widens its “comprehensive product options available to our network partners, and ensuring even more choice to cater for individual circumstances”.

He adds: “Protection remains an extremely important area for us as a network, and our member firms have everything at their disposal to be successful in this space, including market-leading tech, ongoing support from our BDMs, plus the opportunity to refer if they wish to do so.”

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As it announced last week, its New Build range is now available up to 95% LTV for residential buyers. 

The lender is also reducing the cost of its New Build three-year fix for those borrowing 85% LTV — this was previously the maximum LTV available.

These new three-year fixed rates include a rate of 5.39% at 95% LTV. This has no product fee and comes with £250 cashback. 

Santander is also offer a rate of 5.15% at 90% LTV, again with no product fee, and a rate of 4.97% at 90% LTV with a £999 fee. 

For those with a larger deposit Santander is offering a rate of 5.1% with no product fee, up to 85% LTV.  This is a reduction on the previous rate of 5.18%.  

All of its new build exclusive products come with a nine month competition deadline. 

As well as raising the LTV on residential new build properties, Santander has also increased the maximum LTV for buy-to-let new build flats from 75% to 80%. It has yet to release details of the pricing of these products. 

Santander head of development, mortgages Graham Sellar says: “Our change will not only help more buyers get onto the property ladder sooner but also, with the majority of new build properties achieving an energy performance certificate rating of A or B, support the wider transition to greener living.”

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The specialist finance distributor has promoted Dan Morris to the role of intermediary sales director, while Sat Bhandal becomes the company’s corporate sales director. Both are newly-created roles for the company.

In the role of intermediary sales  director Morris will take full responsibility for the management of  CSF’s telephony and field sales teams, and will use his experience to drive growth through new and existing finance broker relationships.

He will also continue to to oversee the support provided to mortgage club and network relationships.

Bhandal’s new role will see him focus on strengthening CFS’s professional introducer relationships in addition to leading an expanding team of client relationship directors.

Both will report directly to group sales director, Jason Berry. Morris and Bhandal have between them 11 years’ experience with CFS and Berry says they have proven track record of achieving sales growth.

Berry adds: “In their new leadership positions they’ll both be able to and maximise the opportunities that exist in their particular channels, and serve the needs of both their teams as well as our brokers, introducers and professional partners.”

Based in the West Midlands with a national reach, CSF is a specialist distributor operating across six specialist finance sectors: bridging, buy to let, commercial, development finance, second charge loans and specialist residential.

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