Investors are moving away from the stock market and seeking better returns on their money elsewhere in the private rental market.

Rising rents and rising property prices are causing more landlords to see the Buy to Let market as an area for expansion.

Only a quarter of tenants have plans to buy a home despite the arrival of the Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme.

The private rental market is in good health with confidence around business expectations for the UK Financial Market running five times higher than this time in 2012.

More than one-in-three landlords say demand in the rental sector has started to level off.

The private rental sector is growing faster than any other form of housing tenure and now accounts for 17% of all UK property stock. Around 1.3m private landlords are offering accommodation to a vast range of tenant types.

Quick and efficient processing is the biggest demand brokers have of lenders.

The harshly named Eurozone PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) are still taking their bitter medicine – recession.

Whilst Premier Inn’s catchy television adverts helped keep them at the top spot for advertising recall, the budget brand also enjoyed the top spot for business and leisure traveller usage.

Back in 2007/8, the case load of the average mortgage intermediary included 30 to 35 remortgages per year, their largest single slice of business.

A great deal of noise exists around interest-only lending in the residential market, where this type of product, though important, remains relatively niche for well understood reasons.

While Silvio Berlusconi, three times Italian prime minister, faces prison for fraud, the web of cross-holdings between Italian banks, commerce and industry is unravelling and the economic outlook is bleak.