Will all these houses be unmortgageable?

[Unmortgageable]

Last week our buyers pulled out as their bank told them that our house is unmortgageable. We've live here for five years and are currently paying a mortgage on it

So the reason that it is unmortgageable is that it's a Victorian semi and there's no firewall between the houses. Thinking back over our previous houses, none of them have had firewalls - including a Victorian terrace where you could have gone from one end to the other.

I know we should have one; when we had some building work done after moving in we asked the builder and he refused the work - he's only ever put them in when doing loft conversions.

I've dealt with the loss of our dream (detached!) house, but does this mean that the bank is declaring every house in the country with no firewall unmortgageable? That's a heck of a lot of houses.

Our house is an Edwardian semi- I wouldn't think it has a firewall. Never heard mention of it in the survey. It wasn't a problem.

That’s unusual, it should have been grandfathered over as the house was built before the requirements came in, which was the late 1920s. So it shouldn’t have been an issue.

It will just be their lender

It might be the opinion of that specific bank - it won’t be nationwide policy.

just put up a barrier...we had to do this in the first terrace we had, there was a retention in the mortgage that was released when it was done....fire board or something

this was in the early eighties, so it's not a new problem.

tbh I'd say your surveyors had been remiss in not pointing this out when you bought.

Is the lender a building society? They're a PITA to borrow from far stricter than banks.

Our lender obviously had no problem with it either!

But the buyers' lender is one of the biggest banks out there - so even if it is just this one lender then will they be refusing to lend on any property without a firewall?

@LaurieSchafferIsAllBitterNow

just put up a barrier...we had to do this in the first terrace we had, there was a retention in the mortgage that was released when it was done....fire board or something

this was in the early eighties, so it's not a new problem.

tbh I'd say your surveyors had been remiss in not pointing this out when you bought.

We knew there was no firewall (hence asking the builder about doing one) - we just had no idea that it could be an issue for a mortgage company.

That happened to us when we bought our last house. The mortgage lender just put a retention on the mortgage of about £2k and the vendor put the wall up. The mortgage still continued. After the works had been done they released the £2k.

@Toomuchleopard

That happened to us when we bought our last house. The mortgage lender just put a retention on the mortgage of about £2k and the vendor put the wall up. The mortgage still continued. After the works had been done they released the £2k.

2k sounds reasonable. But declaring the house unmortgageable.....

I live in a house built in 1809 that used to be one big house but is now two semis .... def no firewall between them! We have a mortgage.

I’ve got a mortgage on a house with no firewall and unless I take down the ceilings there won’t ever be one. None of the houses in the terrace have it. There are loads of houses out there that don’t meet any building regs, most mortgage companies can use their common sense though apparently not your buyer’s. They should have shopped around.

I wish they had shopped around! First time buyers, i don't know if that made a difference.

Is it HSBC? They can be quite strict on lending amounts etc, especially First Direct (subsidiary).

Ours was just a breeze block wall so I imagine it was pretty cheap. Can’t you just get it done now.

Not exactly the same thing, but we tried to remortgage our house for a better deal back in 2007 and we were told by the valuer that our house was unmortgageable, because it only has a single-skin gable wall. He almost seemed panicked to get out of the house, as if the wall could give way at any minute and crush us all. That wall had already been there, with no movement, for over 200 years - and will still be there in another 200 years' time, after we and the valuer are all long gone.

Of course, this was shortly before the global financial crash kicked off, so we did wonder if the banks had maybe continued as normal on the surface, so as not to raise any premature alarms, but might have told their employees to turn down business whenever they could. His reactions were totally irrational; we can't know for sure, though.

Impending financial crash or not, I do think that some lenders have their own agendas and seemingly quite arbitrary preferences and will find any excuse to turn you down, maybe also to turn things back on you - like in The Simpsons, when Flanders had complained about Homer's multiple acts of antisocial behaviour and then Homer comes back with "Well, I don't complain about your moustache, do I?!"

Insurers do it all the time - offering you a ridiculous sky-high premium or just outright declining you based on some statistic or another; then you call another insurer and get yourself a reasonable offer straightaway.

When we were selling our house last year, Victorian semi, it was initially valued at £0 by our buyers' mortgage company as the bank wanted the wall ties checked. The house was on for over £600k and we had new wall ties fitted cost us £4k and the sale went through! Banks can be very cautious but seems ridiculous to give a zero value for work costing a tiny fraction of the house!

That’s pretty much what is happening to 800 000 household living in «new» builds finished prior to the introduction of the ill though EWS1, despite those behind more up to date hence safer in case of fire. Doesn’t matter if there is cladding and below 18 meters high. Government is pressing for the banks to stop requesting this certificate.

@Toomuchleopard

Ours was just a breeze block wall so I imagine it was pretty cheap. Can’t you just get it done now.

Tbh, it would be a horrendous job that I can't imagine a builder wanting - the loft hatch is tiny and above the stairs. The builder who was already in our house doing other work refused it!

2 reasons, I would want it done , any of
The neighbours ( terrace) can easily access your property just by going across the roof space . I’ve been in houses where you could do this and know of someone that had someone in the house but couldn’t prove which one .

And also it needs to be there as a fire wall, if next doer had a fire it could spread through the roof space easily.

It’s Not a great job to be doing as it’s very time consuming getting all the materials up there and working in a tight space.

Well, your buyers could get a new mortgage from a different lender who almost certainly would approve it - your estate agent could point out you already have a mortgage through X company so try there…

But if they don’t like your house enough to do this and are spooked by the lack of fire wall that’s up to them.

We got a mortgage on ours, but built the wall ASAP. Neighbours were chain smokers

@NoSquirrels

Well, your buyers could get a new mortgage from a different lender who almost certainly would approve it - your estate agent could point out you already have a mortgage through X company so try there…

But if they don’t like your house enough to do this and are spooked by the lack of fire wall that’s up to them.

The buyers thought that we should be able to get a firewall put up and signed off by building regs in four weeks - they had slightly unrealistic expectations.

@MissFritton65

When we were selling our house last year, Victorian semi, it was initially valued at £0 by our buyers' mortgage company as the bank wanted the wall ties checked. The house was on for over £600k and we had new wall ties fitted cost us £4k and the sale went through! Banks can be very cautious but seems ridiculous to give a zero value for work costing a tiny fraction of the house!

I've been working on our 1920s house, and in the course of that I encountered the wall ties from that time. Ruddy great iron things with massive prongs. A little surface rust, but you could still cosh an elephant out cols with them. I have been using a complete one I retrieved from the cavity for levering bricks into place when bricklaying into awkward spaces. When I filled in a bit of internal leaf wall a previous owner had removed, I got modern wall ties to tie to the old external wall. They're weeny little stainless steel things. No comparison! We had to cut an old one out to do the rebricking, and it took OH ages to cut through it with a power tool. I bet you could snap the new ones by hand if you wiggled them a few times.

Friends of ours had a firewall put in their terrace, IIRC their mortgage at the time required it, and that was back in the 1990s. Quite apart form the safety thing, they found it was useful to prevent a dodgy character further down the terrace breaking in their house from above (which he had done to others on the terrace).