The big news this week is the criteria changes made by HBOS to their mortgage product range. From a buy to let perspective they have finally come clean and made it transparent about who they want to lend to, and it’s not to big investors.

The basic summary is:

9 Buy to Let mortgages maximum across the HBOS group
Maximum lending on new build flats/newly converted flats has been reduced to 65%.
A limit of £3 million applies to Buy to Let lending across the HBOS group (BM Solutions, Bank of Scotland, Halifax and Intelligent Finance)

The other major move by HBOS (or what was HBOS) is to withdraw their self certification residential mortgages – this is going to have a significant impact on self employed people who currently struggle to prove their income in way that is acceptable to full status lenders.

So there you have it – as explained last week we thought new build would be first on the chopping board and now they’ve been chopped.