Part single skin brickwork, can I get a mortgage?

[Didyousaysomethingdarling]

If you have an old house (mine is grade 2 listed) and some of it has single skin (half brick) walls, have you managed to get a mortgage and if so which lender please?

bump

You need a broker (try unbiased.co.uk) but but I don't think you'll have too much trouble. Alternatively try a smaller building society, they tend to specialize in this type of thing which required some individual underwriting

Maybe I'm missing something, bit why would that be a barrier to getting any normal mortgage? I can't remember any potential mortgagor asking whether the property's walls had a cavity, just whether the value stacked up....

@hockeysticks89
Thank you.

I'm not sure why that would be an issue. My current and last house both had single skin walls for part of the building. The question didn't even come up.

@eurochick please could you tell me how old your house was/is? 1930’s houses have solid walls with no cavity but are the width of a whole brick, so mortgageable. Very old houses are often single brick i.e. laid end to end and mortgage lenders don’t always lend on these types of houses. Sometimes they’re viewed as non-standard construction.

I have a combination of this and stone walls and have a mortgage with the Coventry building society with no issues

Our last house was 1930s. Current place is older. No issues. Why do you think this will be a problem?

@eurochick Because the estate agent said it may well be a problem. Also a friend had a mortgage declined on a property, where only a small part of the victorian extension was single skin brick work.

@Mycathatesmecuddling Thank you that's extremely helpful, since I want to apply to 'single skin friendly' lenders in the first instance.

@eurochick Might you be able to let me know who the lenders were, for your half brick properties? Thank you.

I’ve never heard of it being a problem. Our house is Tudor, is all single skin and didn't have an issue at all. Most of homes built before 1930s will be single skin.

@LizzieSiddal Most Victorian houses and post Victorian houses are one brick thick. It’s my understanding poorly built/low quality Victorian houses were half brick thick. Might you be able to let me know who the lender was on your Tudor house?

@Didyousaysomethingdarling I’m with Barclays.

@LizzieSiddal thank you.

Very many 1930s houses have cavity walls. It may be unusual, but we live in an Edwardian house with cavity walls.

Anyway I don't think it's a huge issue. A lot will depend on the survey.

My 1913 house had cavity walls.

I now live in an 1829 house with single brick, the previous owners before me (I've been here 4yrs) all had mortgages (I can see from the deeds and I also happen to know the previous owner). Its a terraced cottage and my neighbour has a mortgage.

Georgian house here. No idea what’s going on in the walls, but there’s certainly no cavity and I’ve certainly never been asked about it.

No problem getting a mortgage with (over the years) Barclays, Metrobank and NatWest.

Hello, I wondered how you got on with this? We’ve just had a mortgage refused because our dream house has approx 25% single skin walls :( gutted!

We too have had an issue this week.
our mortgage (which we’ve had for the last 5 years) with platform, was agreed no problem. Similarly, when we went to our new fixed term just 3 months ago, nothing was mentioned!
we recently applied for a £10k addition to our mortgage to do some home improvements, including re rendering the whole of the outside of the property (which I think would add value) and it was refused due to the house having some single skin walls.
Im absolutely gutted. So worried that our home will be unsaleable in the future. I’ve only heard of this problem arising very recently. Our neighbours only bought their single skin property 10 months ago, with a very small deposit and no issues so I do have some hope!

Victorian farmhouse. Barclays lent on it.

@Didyousaysomethingdarling is part of your house single skin? (ie half brick?) I’m interested to know if others have been in the same boat as we’ve recently discovered that one wall in ours is and not sure what to do. Lots of people saying that main parts of houses would never be built as such and it’s unlikely., but I’m sure a small percentage of ours is. It’s defo not as thick as the rest of the house (and only upstairs- which is really odd as I was always under the impression the whole of the front of our house was the original part and that it was always 2 story 🤷‍♀️
we had no problems getting a mortgage on it or on our old house with was partly single skin (but only in a downstairs extension but after applying for £10k additional borrowing to do improvements, it was declined on this basis.