Affordability still top concern for prospective homeowners
More than a quarter (29 per cent) of Brits say they would need a lottery win to be able to move home, highlighting the rising affordability concerns in the housing market.
According to a new survey from Money.co.uk, the major barriers to getting on the property ladder include earnings (31 per cent), deposits (28 per cent) and mortgage availability (24 per cent).
Seven per cent of prospective homeowners said an inheritance could make all the difference and 41 per cent revealed they wouldn’t seek government support when purchasing a property.
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Among the multiple-choice answers provided, the most popular trigger that would make people move faster was a house price fall, according to 46 per cent of would be homeowners.
This was followed by 40 per cent citing a pay rise and 22 per cent saying a new job would enable them to move more quickly.
Lee Birkett, founder and chief executive of JustUs, said that a third of the market is excluded and there’s an opportunity for P2P platforms to support them.
The platform has been planning to launch P2P owner-occupied mortgages, known as the people’s mortgage, and the details are currently with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
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“It’s an opportunity for P2P,” Birkett said.
“With a lot of lenders to get a decent deal you need a 40 per cent deposit. We’d like to do something equivalent with a five or 10 per cent deposit. The biggest barrier of entry is affordability, we have no problem with offering interest-only mortgages which have cheaper repayments than capital repayment.
“The people’s mortgage will either be interest-only or capital repayment so people can afford the mortgage. Once the FCA has given us the verification nothing can stop us offering 100 per cent loan-to-value (LTV) mortgages because we’re regulated by the FCA and not the Prudential Regulation Authority.
“It’s unlikely we will, we may go up to 95 per cent LTV and lenders can choose their profile of risk. It’ll be determined by the borrower profile and lender profile and there’s no one size fits all.
“We are not the lender, the people are the lenders. There’s an old and new generation that’s excluded from buying so that’s why there’s such a large number of excluded mortgage prisoners and the people’s mortgage is so important.”