Is buy-to-let a good option again?

If you can only get 1% or less in a deposit account, buy-to-let seems like a good bet again. I’m told that yields as high as 7% to 8% have been achieved on properties bought at auction. Even if you don’t buy at exactly the bottom of the market, it wouldn’t really matter if you are buying as an investment. You’ll be congratulating yourself on having got a decent income.

Buy to let mortgages still seem to be hard to find, and they’re not attractive when you do find them. Mortgage rates for buy-to-let are being offered at rates above 6%. On top of that, you may have to pay a fee up front of anything up to 3% of the loan in order to get a fixed rate.

Bradford and Bingley used to be the main buy-to-let lender but it seems that they are now so keen to get out of that market that they are trying to encourage customers to remortgage by waving early repayment charges.

So it may not be a market you can get into if you need a mortgage. But if you have cash, it seems to me that it may be a good market to be getting into at the moment.