“It’s a bit like Consumer Duty for landlords,” he said. “If you were a good landlord and you were already doing the right things, it makes no difference. It just puts a few extra barriers in your way. But there are still lots of amateur landlords. I still see people who come to us and say they want to buy a property in a limited company, and they’re a basic rate taxpayer, so there’s lots of misinformation about buy-to-let.”
Hampton also runs GB Landlords, a separate business focused on landlord education. He expects the Act to polarise the sector further between professional and amateur operators.
The remortgage opportunity brokers are missing
UK Finance forecasts 1.8 million fixed-rate mortgages will reach maturity this year, with external remortgaging projected to grow 10% to £77 billion. Hampton, who handles approximately 60 to 80 remortgage and product transfer cases per month, sees the wave as a test of how holistically brokers are advising clients.
“I think brokers have got to get in the right mindset of calling it a remortgage opportunity and not a product transfer,” he said. “Product transfer is the easiest, laziest option. You’ve got people coming off rates starting with ones and going to rates starting with fours. For them, one of the softeners is to extend the term. But that’s a conversation lots of brokers tend not to have.”
The protection gap concerns him more. “I’ve seen lots of posts about ‘I’ve saved my client £180 a month’ – fantastic. But if that was me, I’d have been saying, is the debt properly protected? Unemployment is on the rise, it’s getting harder to find a job. Your Consumer Duty obligations should be having that conversation. For me, there’s not enough holistic advice. It’s just purely and simply, what’s your monthly payment going to be?”