Leasehold mortgages

Crowd-sourcing lender attitudes to mortgages on leasehold properties with building safety issues


Quicklinks: Barclays / Nationwide / The Mortgage Works / Halifax / HSBC / Lloyds / Natwest / Birmingham Midshires / Santander / Skipton / TSB / Other

The building safety scandal has blighted the lives of tens of thousands of people’s lives in the UK over the last few years, particularly since 2019 when the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) introduced the controversial EWS1 form.

The mortgage lending criteria of banks and building societies on affected properties is very unclear and seems to change regularly, making it hard for owners of leasehold properties to understand whether they are able to re-mortgage or sell their properties.

This website (created by me, James, a fellow leaseholder currently stuck in this mess!) attempts to shine a light on these criteria by crowd-sourcing case studies of successful and unsuccesful mortgage applications.

The content may also be used in meetings between the EOCS team and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities as examples of lenders not fulfilling their pledges and promises. Please help populate it with your own story! You can contribute by completing this form (and giving as little or as much information as you like):

  1. Submission form

You can find out more about the wider situation via the End Our Cladding Scandal campaign website and their Twitter account.

Background: Statement from lenders on 20 December 2022:

“[…] From Monday 9 January 2023, Lenders will be able to consider mortgage applications on properties in buildings in England of 11m and over in height.
Lenders will need evidence that buildings will be self-remediated by developers or covered by a recognised government scheme* or by leaseholder protections contained in the Building Safety Act, as evidenced by a Leaseholder Deed of Certificate. (All mortgage lending is subject to regulatory requirements and individual firms’ lending policies).”

Lenders supporting this statement as at 20 December 2022 are:

Barclays Bank, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide Building Society, NatWest, Santander

RICS, the Building Societies Association, and UK Finance also support this statement.

(*) Recognised remediation schemes in England are:

Source: UK Finance


Below you will now find case-studies grouped by lender.

Barclays

Nationwide

The Mortgage Works

Halifax

HSBC

Lloyds

Natwest

Birmingham Midshires

Santander

Skipton

TSB

Other