The new Labour government’s goal to build 1.5million homes throughout its tenure has always been considered ambitious.
While today’s warnings from the National Housing Federation (NHF) and the Home Builders Federation (HBF) of potentially significant shortcomings are valid, the mortgage market must respond to this opportunity.
We all understand that developers can only build at the rate at which they can sell, and to achieve this we need higher LTV and higher LTI mortgage products.
Perenna has been making the case for flexible long term fixed rate mortgages for years, however there is still an accessibility issue in the UK. These mortgage products enable responsible higher LTI lending to households with little financial resilience while mitigating the concerns from the Bank of England.
Yet first-time buyers continue to be limited as the lending of these safer products are highly restricted being subject to the same restrictions as short term fixed rate products. We must foster innovation back into our industry and adapt our products to keep up with the ever changing demands of the UK population. It is the only way we can return to historic levels of house building and homeownership.
