For London’s mortgage lenders, curveballs smack much harder in today’s market. That seems to be the prime explanation for the near-30 per cent dive in the share price of OSB Group at the end of last week.
The FTSE 250 banking group, which specialises in lending to buy-to-let landlords, expects to take a hit of £160 million to £180 million to its interest income for the first half of this year, equivalent to about a fifth of the total income analysts had forecast for the year as a whole.
Why? Canny borrowers are refinancing fixed-term mortgages faster, spending less time on the higher variable rate that they are switched on to once the term of their mortgage expires. Analysts have downgraded forecasts for the net
