UK to make homeownership easier for first-time buyers
The UK’s new Economic Secretary and Housing Minister, Lucy Rigby and Matthew Pennycook, held meetings with major high street banks on Wednesday (10 September) to discuss making first-time buyers their top priority.
The duo aim to take advantage of the Leeds Reforms announced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in July to help more people with small deposits and low incomes get a mortgage.
Those changes are expected to help up to 36,000 extra first-time buyers secure their own home in the first year alone, while the Financial Conduct Authority is simplifying mortgage lending rules such as affordability checks so that more people can borrow within safe and regulated limits.
The banking roundtable follows a meeting last week with building societies, where lenders explained how some of their most innovative products could help thousands more struggling to get on the housing ladder, including safely rolling out no and low deposit mortgages for customers with strong credit ratings.
“From changing our affordability calculations, offering larger loans and lending to more people, to introducing novel mortgage products that reduce the need to save for a large deposit, supporting first-time buyers is a key focus for us,” said Jatin Patel (Head of Retail Banking at Barclays UK).
“The recent changes introduced by the regulators have already helped thousands onto the property ladder who otherwise would not have been able to buy. We welcome engagement with the government on its ambition for first-time buyers, with a view to ongoing collaboration with policymakers on further measures to increase opportunities for home ownership and to unlock mortgage innovation.”
This was echoed by Henry Jordan, Nationwide’s Group Director of Mortgages.
“Collaboration is crucial in driving the UK’s housebuilding ambitions and wider economic growth. The government and regulators showed this to great effect through the recent changes made to high loan to income lending,” he said.
“We responded immediately to relax our lending criteria to support even more first-time buyers through our Helping Hand mortgage. We hope these discussions will help find and establish new and innovative ways of enabling homeownership through a joint approach.”
