Month: March 2021

New guidance has been released aimed at reducing the number of wall safety surveys being requested by banks and building societies on blocks of flats.

Thousands of flat owners have been unable to sell or remortgage because they cannot get the checks done.

The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) said it would help lenders save time when the inspections were not needed.

Most lenders are likely to follow the advice but there is no guarantee.

The checks were first developed to assess the potential financial impact of cladding on high-rise flats, after 72 people died at Grenfell Tower.

To begin with, only those who owned flats in tall buildings with dangerous flammable cladding were affected.

But after the government extended its advice to smaller properties in January 2020, mortgage lenders began demanding fire surveys from a much wider range of sellers.

Hundreds of thousands of leaseholders have since been asked for EWS1 external wall safety forms when they sell or remortgage.

This requires a specialist survey – but there haven’t been enough qualified surveyors to do the checks, leaving thousands of owners “in limbo”, according to the government.

‘Costly remediation’

Some owners have also reported being asked for EWS1s when there appears to be little or no flammable materials attached to their building.

RICS said its new guidance would clarify types of properties which will, and will not, require additional inspections to speed up mortgage approvals.

It said the guidance was the result of “painstaking” consultation with valuers, leaseholders, lenders’ fire safety experts and government.

“This announcement is a crucial step in unlocking the market, by ensuring that only those buildings where there are risks of costly remediation as a result of safety concerns from cladding are subject to additional checks,” said Dame Janet Paraskeva, chair of the RICS Standards & Regulation Board.

“The guidance is anticipated to result in a reduction in the number of EWS1 requests which will therefore allow more focus on the assessments of higher risk buildings, which should speed up the overall process whilst ensuring appropriate protection for lenders and purchasers.”

Last year the government tried to solve the backlog by saying that flats in buildings without cladding would no longer need EWS1 checks.

But mortgage lenders refused to recognise the directive.

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick said RICS’ new guidance would mean “nearly 500,000 leaseholders will no longer need an EWS1 form – helping homeowners to sell or re-mortgage more quickly and easily”.

He added that the government had paid for an additional 500 surveyors to be trained to carry out EWS1 checks when they are necessary.

“The government has also provided an unprecedented investment of £5bn to protect leaseholders from the costs of cladding remediation,” he said.

‘Risk appetite’

In a joint statement, UK Finance and the Building Societies Association, which represent lenders, said that they expected many lenders to follow the guidance “which should see the number of EWS1 requests fall”.

But they added that it was still a decision “for each lender to make based on their own risk appetite”.

RICS said it would work with the government and other stakeholders to ensure the guidance is implemented by 5 April.

It will also publish advice for buyers and sellers about the risks associated with multi-story, multi occupancy buildings.

The Chancellor has announced a new low-deposit mortgage guarantee scheme – but how will it work?

After days of speculation, chancellor Rishi Sunak confirmed in his Budget speech that the government will back a new mortgage guarantee scheme.

Sunak has announced a new guarantee scheme to bring back the low-deposit mortgages that he previously said had “virtually disappeared”.

In his budget speech, the chancellor said it was: “a policy who gives people who can’t afford a big deposit the chance to buy their own home.”

But how will the new government-backed 95 per cent mortgages work? And would you be able to get one?

From small deposits to the risks of negative equity, here’s what you need to know about the new measures aimed at giving (some) first-time buyers a helping hand.

Why has Rishi Sunak put 95 per cent mortgages in the Budget 2021?

Low-deposit mortgages have been wiped out in the last year as a result of the coronavirus crisis’s impact on the UK economy. Most mortgage lenders will only offer a maximum 90 per cent loan-to-value, asking buyers to pay a 10 per cent deposit.

This makes it more difficult for first-time buyers to get on the property ladder, as they can struggle to save up a large enough deposit.

Low-deposit mortgages also became a rarity in the years following the 2008 financial crash, prompting the introduction of the Help To Buy scheme under David Cameron’s government. Higher loan-to-value mortgages have started to reappear in recent years, but the backlog of mortgage applications caused by the Covid-19 crisis prompted lenders to take them off the market.

“A government backed mortgage guarantee scheme will help first time buyers get on the housing ladder at a time when for many owning a home seems an impossible dream,” said  Mark Hayward, chief policy adviser at Propertymark, prior to the Budget.

“Alongside the potential extension of the stamp duty holiday that we have been calling for, this new scheme will go some way in giving some hope to first time buyers at a time when the size of deposits required means they fall at the first hurdle.”

The new scheme seems to have piqued buyers’ interest already, with Rightmove revealing that the use of our mortgage calculator jumped by 85 per cent within half an hour of Sunak’s announcement, and overall traffic to its website jumped by 16 per cent.

Will the 95 per cent mortgages be for first-time buyers only?

Boris Johnson has said that he wants “generation rent to become generation buy”, but the new mortgages will not be solely available for first-time buyers.

The 95 per cent mortgages will be available to all buyers of properties costing up to £600,000. According to a study by Rightmove, this accounts for 86 per cent of all homes currently up for sale in the UK.

All buyers will also be able to fix their initial mortgage rate for at least five years.

Unlike the Help To Buy scheme, the scheme will not be linked exclusively to first-time buyers, or restricted to new build properties only.

How do you get a 95 per cent mortgage?

The mortgages will be available from April this year, until December 31 2022. It is not thought that banks will be helped to adjust their affordability checks to make the scheme available to a greater number of buyers.

As it stands, mortgage lenders tend to only offer loans of up to 4.5 times the buyer’s salary.

How will this work for 95 per cent mortgage lenders?

Lenders stopped offering 95 per cent mortgages as the economic forecast deteriorated over 2020, due to the fact that they are higher risk products.

“First time buyers have been missing out as banks chose to focus on perceived higher quality loans. For a healthy property market, the first rung of the ladder needs to be working and this will ensure that,” said Dominic Agace, chief executive of Winkworth, prior to the Budget announcement.

These new mortgages will be guaranteed by the government, removing the risk from the loans for lenders.

Which lenders will be offering the 95 per cent mortgages?

In his budget speech, the Chancellor said that “several of the country’s largest lenders including Lloyds, Natwest, Santander, Barclays and HSBC will be offering these 95% mortgages from next month.”

He also said that “more, including Virgin Money will follow shortly after.”

These big names have already committed themselves, with others likely to follow over the coming weeks.

What are the risks for buyers?

With the UK housing market prospects uncertain for the coming years, there is concern that low-deposit mortgage buyers could be at risk of falling into negative equity.

If house prices were to fall, recent buyers with a 95 per cent LTV mortgage would be more likely to owe more money than their house is worth. Buyers who have paid a larger deposit could avoid that issue by having less to repay.

Negative equity makes it difficult (or impossible) to sell or remortgage a home, proving a risk to new buyers hoping to climb the property ladder.

What effect could the 95 per cent mortgages have on the housing market?

Some industry commentators have speculated that the new mortgages could inflate house prices. This was the criticism lobbied at the Help To Buy guarantee scheme, which housing charity Shelter says raised house prices by 1.4 per cent.

Some experts, however, have been more optimistic.

“In my view, this is a better way than Help To Buy,” said Agace, in advance of Sunak’s Budget. “It will avoid the bubbles created around the new build properties that qualified for Help To Buy by spreading it across the whole market.”

“With an effective plan to deliver more homes in the medium to longer term, [the new mortgage guarantee scheme] need not mean significant price rises.”

“Critics may argue that it will only aid house price inflation, but without such a scheme would developers be so keen to put spades in the ground?” added Mark Harris, chief executive of mortgage broker SPF Private Clients, also ahead of the Budget speech. “The supply of new housing is nowhere near where it needs to be to satisfy demand.”

Agace also suggested that the scheme will help stimulate the lower end of the market. “This is a positive solution to the current conundrum in the property market where properties under £600,000 have been increasingly difficult to sell, due to lower mortgage availability,” he says.

“Meanwhile, second time buyers with plentiful cheaper mortgage products have been in a boom of activity.”

By Ailis Brennan

Evening Standard