Mortgage Providers Slam the Doors on the PRS
There have been impassioned pleas for landlords to open their hearts and their portfolios to asylum seekers, but research has shown that over 75% of mortgage lenders are slamming the doors.
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The Mirror newspaper has conducted an investigation and claims that 55 out of 75 mortgage lenders have conditions built into their small print which clamp down on landlords letting their properties to people claiming asylum from outside of the UK. When a similar investigation was carried out in 2018, only two lenders included this rule, however with the implementation of the successful Syrian Resettlement Scheme and more recently the Afghanistan Operation Warm Welcome, are the lenders reacting with clause changes?
Slamming the door
According to the research, carried out by software Criteria Brain, the lenders state that they will ‘not consider applications where the property will be let to an asylum seeker’. The largest high street names that hold this policy include Natwest, TSB and Metro Bank.
The Mirror reached out to the big three lenders for comment on these findings. Natwest and TSB declined to comment, however Metro Bank issued the following statement:
All buy to let mortgage customers with Metro Bank must adhere to our tenancy rules. As a matter of policy, Metro Bank doesn’t exclude asylum seekers from being tenants of our buy-to-let mortgage customers.
Home Office permission
The remaining 25% are not entirely convinced either. Their documentation states that under the terms of the mortgage agreement, the landlord can ‘potentially consider’ allow asylum seeker tenants if permission is given by the Home Office.
Whilst these findings are clearly shocking, findings by the NRLA has revealed that demand for private housing is at an all time high, so it’s possible that lenders can afford to be picky at the moment when it comes to ‘ideal tenants’.
The research, conducted by research firm BVA/BDRC on behalf of the NRLA, found that 57% of landlords surveyed confirmed that they were experiencing a higher demand for their properties, up from 39% in the second quarter of 2021.
