Posts with tag: Aston Mead

A leading estate agency has been extremely vocal on what they feel has caused home loans to drop in the first three months of 2015.

Figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders show that it has been a slow start to the year, with total mortgage lending down by 12% on the final quarter of 2014. Aston Mead believes that unnecessary restrictions included in some mortgage criteria is to blame for the fall.

Ludicrous

The National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) has indicated that it is now taking an average of 50 days before an offer of a mortgage is made. This statistic was met with anger by Aston Mead’s managing director Charles Hesse, who said that it was, ‘simply ludicrous’ that buyers were having to wait seven weeks for a mortgage offer.

Hesse continued by saying, ‘ the current system is so draconian that it’s preventing some perfectly eligible people from getting a mortgage at all. It’s not as if the market was flooded with repossessed properties-even at the height of the recession.’[1]

Turning his attention to older buyers, Hesse said that for them, ‘not to be able to include assets and savings in their assessment-other than any rental income-is patently absurd.’ Unless changes are implemented, Hesse believes that the, ‘next generation is going to be saddled with this problem too.’[2]

[1-2] http://www.estateagenttoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2015/5/agent-blasts-%22unnecessarily-restrictive-lending%22