Presenting at the Westminster Business Forum policy conference, ‘Next steps for mortgage markets in England’, Jonathan Handford, interim managing director of Fine and Country, said lender criteria on property style and location had “tightened beyond the point of common sense”.
He said there was a recent case where a residential property in a sought-after area worth £1.1m was valued at zero because it was near a pub.
Handford said this was an “over-cautious approach that fails to reflect real market demand or the lived reality of homeowners” that “risked undermining buyer confidence” and “stagnating transactions unnecessarily”.
More certainty in sales
Handford said England had “one of the most convoluted and problematic house buying processes in the world”, saying improving reliability was not just timely but essential.
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He added that around 35-40% of transactions in England fell through, and completion times were more than 16 weeks on average.
Handford added that the conveyancing process was “outdated, inconsistent and overly subjective”, which led to delays.
Handford said the transaction process could “only go as fast as the slowest cog in the mechanism”, and it only took a delay in one link for everyone to be affected.
He said this could be resolved by digital identification and property logbooks to reduce delays in verification.
Handford suggested mandated reservation agreements, saying that currently, a sale was not truly agreed until contracts were exchanged, which created “uncertainty and a high fall-through rate”, which wasted time and money.
He said a reservation agreement, along with a small reservation fee with set-out timelines and conditions, would protect the buyer and seller while keeping transactions on track.
