Bridging & Commercial can confirm that specialist lender Octane Capital has temporarily withdrawn its range of BTL products, citing a rapidly changing and unpredictable financial landscape.
Octane launched its BTL product range in 2020 with the USP of requiring zero stress-testing, something that attracted strong demand from brokers.
Since then, the finance sector has seen numerous changes, including the removal of the mortgage affordability test and several consecutive Bank of England interest rate rises.
According to Octane’s managing director, Mark Posniak, the soaring interest rates and rapid shifts in the financial landscape have led Octane to make the strategic decision to quietly pause new BTL lending while the markets stabilise.
“It’s not new news to state that the fiscal backdrop in recent months has been fast-moving and unpredictable for financial institutions,” said Mark.
“Many have pulled products, and all have raised rates and are eyeing the landscape with more caution than in recent years, especially where tight margins dictate less certain profitability due to swap rate volatility.
“In June, we opted to temporarily withdraw our BTL products while we evaluated base rate movements and the wider economic and political environment.
“That’s just good sense and multiple lenders did the same — we were certainly not the first.
“We continue to maintain an established BTL loan book of over £300m, which is performing solidly.”
Mark shared that Octane plans to reintroduce a range of revised three- and five-year fixed-rate BTL products in Q4, when he hopes the market would have settled.
“In the interim, we continue to offer flexible, bespoke third-gen short-term bridging, developer-exit and refurbishment loans to our partners, and will continue to do so until we announce our new BTL range in Q4,” he added.
Octane has lent over £1.35bn across over 2,000 loans since its launch just over five years ago.
