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A commitment not to be taken lightly
As a girl I went with my parents when they went to arrange their mortgage. This entailed a personal meeting with the branch manager of the building society where they were savers and had their existing mortgage.
I was left under no illusion that this meeting was a big deal - we all had to don our Sunday best and I was expected to remain silent.
Fast forward to the first decade of this century where we had lenders competing for volume and mortgage offers online in a matter of moments. The concept of the personal interview, of only lending to existing customers and that the borrower accepted that they were wholly responsible for their own debt, seems a distant memory.
Similarly, when investing in what we are frequently reminded is the biggest financial commitment we’ll generally ever make - buying a house - it used to be the norm for the purchaser to obtain their own survey or valuation report.
I heard recently of a borrower complaining to the company who did the mortgage valuation for their lender because they’d subsequently defaulted and felt that they’d been lent “too much”. The borrower didn’t seem to grasp that they’d made the purchase of their own free will and made a commitment to repay the money on agreed terms.
Nowadays, just 12% of property purchasers have a home buyers’ report while only 3% will pay for a more detailed building survey. With increasing talk of back to basics, perhaps property buyers should be reminded of the prudence of obtaining a more detailed report on a property prior to purchase.
ALISON BEECH
BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP DIRECTOR
SPICERHAART
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