Figures from broker Mortgages for Business showed historically low rates meant more landlords were looking to refinance properties in their portfolio.

In total, 95% of landlords have some borrowing in their portfolio and 45% were planning to remortgage before the end of the year.

In addition 60% of survey respondents said they planned to increase their property portfolios over the next six months. Almost half (47%) of these will need to refinance in order to do so.

A key reason behind this would be to diversify their portfolio with three-in-ten landlords were looking to purchase houses of multiple occupation. Multi-unit freehold blocks (19%), semi-commercial property (15%) and commercial property (15%) also proved popular.

Eight-in-ten (82%) survey respondents were also considering purchasing at least one vanilla buy-to-let property.

David Whittaker, managing director of Mortgages for Business, said: “With buy-to-let mortgage rates at historic lows, this strategy may well prove prudent in protecting them against future interest rate rises.

“Of those who are not looking to remortgage, we must surmise that some will be keen to hang onto their existing reversion rates for as long as possible. It will be interesting to see whether the situation changes as the year goes on.”

A separate report from LSL showed annual rent rises fell to just 0.6%, less than half the latest rate of CPI inflation (1.6%). Late payment of rent dropped by £18m month-on-month.