Mortgage declined because of "student area"

Zoology_Dragon

I still find this really odd. I wonder if it hasn't had the same effect where I am because the whole city centre is affected by the restrictions and people will always want to buy property here?

Cautious_Optimist

I'm guessing these HMO restrictions have something to do with the council being unhappy with student's council tax exemption...?

dimbo61

There is a huge shortage of housing in many cities for home owners, professional renters and students which is not going to get better any time soon.
Article 4 is a very poor way of trying to control HMO properties and effects local owner occupiers.
Improving a property is restricted by Planners and Article 4 rules.
Students are finding that they can either live in very expensive city centre tower blocks approved by the council/university or run down out of town Student areas.
Houses/flats and buildings have been altered and improved over hundreds of years in this country to suit the needs of the owners and family this is now controlled by the coumcil and the political party in control of that council !

Armorica

Regional building society http://www.mansfieldbs.co.uk/mansfield-building-society.aspx?ID=79 (the Nottingham Building Society seems to act as a broker for others)

I've personally never quite understood the value of a broker

JWest

Zoology_Dragon wrote: »

I still find this really odd. I wonder if it hasn't had the same effect where I am because the whole city centre is affected by the restrictions and people will always want to buy property here?

The whole city area is affected here too. I think it's just that the restrictions have no real effect on the areas without a significant concentration of student lets.

In the more student-populated areas, I guess the fear is that landlords are no longer interested in buying, and residential buyers don't want to live in amongst a load of students.

The whole thing seems ridiculous to me though. The area we're looking at purchasing in is one of the nicest in the city, and it's a hugely convenient location for the city centre. The only reason I can see for prices dropping is that mortgage companies are making it difficult to buy there. It's like some ridiculous self-fulfilling prophecy.

JWest

Cautious_Optimist wrote: »

I'm guessing these HMO restrictions have something to do with the council being unhappy with student's council tax exemption...?

Heh, I hadn't considered that. I think it's more likely they're just trying to pull some stupid social engineering exercise, attempting to stop large swathes of the city turning into student ghettoes. It all seems fairly stupid though, especially devaluing residents properties by introducing these restrictions into areas that are already 80%-90% student occupied.

JWest

Armorica wrote: »

I've personally never quite understood the value of a broker

I did a lot of research into mortgages myself, before consulting a broker as a backup plan on the advice of the MSE house buying guides.

In the end I'm glad I did. While I'm certain that the mortgage I initially picked out would have been fine for our needs, the broker did manage to identify some issues that hadn't occurred to me, and subsequently we went with a slightly different mortgage.

At the end of the day, you can always ditch your broker at any point if you feel he isn't serving your needs. So far ours has been very helpful, saved us a lot of hassle, and hasn't cost us a penny.

Armorica

They may be costing you pennies, they have to earn a fee/commission somehow?

When I bought, the estate agency tried to offer up a broker. I told them who I banked with at the time and they laughed and said they couldn't beat it.

But yeah, local building society - stand a slight chance of getting a decisions based on local knowledge of the area.

moneyistooshorttomention

Cautious_Optimist wrote: »

I'm guessing these HMO restrictions have something to do with the council being unhappy with student's council tax exemption...?

That's exactly what I got told was the real reason behind these HMO restrictions, ie that it wasn't being done for our benefit, but for the Council's benefit (to ensure they maximised their Council Tax taken in).

I'm guessing that the crossover point had been reached between the Council's usual attitude of "When the University says jump, we ask 'how high' " to "Ohmygawd...our Council Tax take will suffer".

moneyistooshorttomention

JWest wrote: »

In the more student-populated areas, I guess the fear is that landlords are no longer interested in buying, and residential buyers don't want to live in amongst a load of students.

Precisely.

I feel that's very much how things were in the area my last house was in. I could see that the proportion of home-owners in that area had declined a bit since I moved in and it felt to me like the area had about got "to the top of the hill" and was going to start sliding down the other side of the hill quite noticeably. I was angry and worried and that was part of why I moved (the house itself being the main one).

Having said that, the main "reason to move from area" was/is still a dream in a few planners' minds and hadn't surfaced yet...but I wasn't going to hang around and wait for it to surface...I could see which way the wind might blow at some point a few years down the line.