If you’re a regular reader of the trade press, then you will have probably seen predictions that 2022 will be a remarkably busy year for remortgage business in the buy-to-let (BTL) market.

The reason for this spike stems back to 2016, when the Bank of England (BoE) introduced tougher underwriting standards on lenders when dealing with portfolio landlords.

Without going into the finer details of the rules, since October 2016, lenders have had to carry out more robust affordability assessments on landlords if they fix for less than five years. However, the rules do not so significantly impact those landlords who opt to fix for five years or longer.

As you’ve probably already guessed, landlords have been choosing five-year fixed rates in far greater numbers since that change.

According to UK Finance, just one in 10 landlords opted for a five-year fixed rate in 2013/14. By the end of 2017, it was more like one in three. In the current market it’s even higher.

As a result, there will be a significant spike in the number of five-year fixed-rate loans maturing in 2022 compared with the historical average.

This means this year, thousands more landlords will be faced with three choices: reverting to their standard variable rate (SVR), remortgaging to capital raise or, if possible, switching to a new deal with their current lender.

With the base rate on the rise, the temptation can be to scour the market for the lenders offering the lowest rates.

That may make sense in the short-term, but I’d argue landlords – and their brokers – would be better off taking a more long term approach.

By that, I mean that landlords, when selecting their next mortgage this year, should also be thinking about what sort of position they will be in when the remortgage matures – the majority in five years’ time but many before then, too.

While rates are still low for the time being, the BoE has made it clear that borrowers can expect multiple rate rises in the coming years.

Fast-forward five years and we could see that the base rate – and mortgage rates – might be significantly higher than they are today.

If that is the case, I’d imagine there will be a lot of landlords out there who will struggle to meet lenders’ rental calculations and affordability checks.

What are the options available to those landlords? Not many, other than reverting to their current lender’s SVR and having to stomach higher monthly repayments as a result.

However, there is a way landlords can significantly increase their chances of securing a good rate at that time while saving thousands of pounds on fees in the process.

That is, of course, by switching to a specialist lender who offering a product transfer (PT) facility.

First, there are far fewer affordability checks carried out on PT customers, meaning landlords significantly increase their chances of securing a good deal at the next product expiry.

And second, because PTs carry much lower fees, landlords can save themselves thousands of pounds when they come to refinance again in the future.

Given where rates are heading, I would wager that many landlords would welcome that piece of mind and would be very thankful to you, their broker, for presenting a remortgage supported by a PT proposition down the line as an option.

Phil Riches is sales and marketing director Keystone Property Finance