According to its half-year results to 31st March 2024, Paragon Banking Group has grown its buy-to-let (BTL) mortgage book by 4.5% on the back of strong levels of customer retention.
Paragon’s BTL loan book ended the period at £12.9bn, up 4.5% compared to the same point last year.
More than 80% of specialist landlord customers whose products matured during the period remained with the bank.
Annualised buy-to-let redemptions stood at 6% for the half year, down from 10.7% at the same point last year, and the lowest rate since the first half of 2015.
Overall, Paragon Banking Group delivered a 13.5% increase in underlying profits to £146.3m for the first six months of the year.
New buy-to-let lending stood at £649.3m, while the pipeline grew from £594.6m at the end of September 2023 to £874m by March 2024, a 47% increase.
The proportion of mortgages written for properties with an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of A to C continued to grow, with more than half of completions within those bands.
In total, Paragon lent £345.7m against EPC A to C rated properties, representing over 55% of new mortgage lending compared to 46% last year.
Richard Rowntree (pictured), managing director of mortgages at Paragon Bank, said: “This is a strong financial and operational performance.
“We were pleased to see our mortgage book grow during the period, which reflects the re-engineering of our retentions operation two years ago and the excellent work undertaken by that team.
“We were also pleased to see lending on EPC A to C properties account for over half of mortgage completions for the first time.
“We were one of the pioneers of green mortgages and it’s therefore pleasing to see that reflected in these results.”
He added: “As anticipated and forecasted, new buy-to-let lending fell during the period, reflecting the wider housing sector, but we have built our new business pipeline back to the levels we saw at the same point in 2023.
“We’re also seeing renewed levels of confidence amongst landlords, particularly those portfolio landlords with four or more properties.”