For those that follow the buy to let mortgage market closely, there has been a small bit of good news over the last few days (and I mean small). Far be it from me to use the term ‘green shoots’ (more like - less manure), but first we saw BM Solutions add some more 75% products to the market, and Bank of Scotland actually re-entered the 75% market with a new 5 year fixed rate. This is the first positive step from a lender in months.

I’ve also heard (on the shrivelled grapevine) that the asset protection scheme has already started to help free the flow of lending, and one of our well known lenders is doubling their daily lending limit from April. What does this mean? Could be less stringent credit scoring. Could be better rates.

The FSA have just published the Turner review (which includes a mortgage market review) – in relation to the mortgage market they are looking into loan to value and income multiples – in fact they are assessing if there is a relationship between customer defaults/bank losses and high initial LTV/loan to income.

The report is due out September 2009 - and it will consider capping loan to value ratios and income multiples.

So what should we make of this? Well the tabloid press had a field day as usual with their tales of doom and gloom but the intermediary association AMI actually welcomed the report in that no formal loan to values/loan income ratios would be rushed into. As usual it’s a matter of wait and see – even though this would have the desired effect of curbing excessive lending we won’t have had much excess anyway by September!