Mortgage declined because of "student area"

dimbo61

Funny thing Councils and Council Tax, huge numbers of empty houses in many city centres ( check out Liverpool) but who pays the empty council tax bills on properties which now belong to the council ?
If you owned an empty property now you can expect to pay 1.5/2 times the normal council tax because it is empty yet councils will not allow conversion of big old 3/4 storey buildings into HMO or flats. Madness and costing you the tax payer millions in lost council tax.
Many Student Landlords want to improve and extend houses to create more bathrooms, bedrooms and living area, who needs an 80/100 foot rear garden.
Councils want huge city centre tower blocks with all students controlled and watched 24/7 .

moneyistooshorttomention

It would make sense to convert many big old houses into flats imo, but not HMO's. Flat are "proper homes", but HMOs are a bit of a different kettle of fish.

80-100' rear garden = bring it on to have a normal size garden for many of us. I've actually got a proper garden now, rather than tiny back yard personally, but I'd still prefer a normal size garden like that. Not all of us look at gardens and think "Who wants grass and plants anyway? Shove some concrete and bricks on it." I'm watching a garden being built over now and thinking "Bet you're popular with the neighbours and you would have just put me off buying their houses in the future, because of my loss of visual amenity/extra feeling of being "closed in" ". Some of us get claustrophobic if there are buildings closing-in on us all around.

sinizterguy

JWest wrote: »

Can anyone offer any advice on what our next step should be?

A different lender.

All lenders work differently and another won't see the same as a problem.

ruggedtoast

JWest wrote: »

I can't see the problem either. It's a lovely house at a good price, on a street with no real student presence, which just happens to be in a postcode with a large percentage of student lets. It's just that the mortgage company's response has made me jittery, and now I'm starting to get paranoid!

I'm not sure what this is about but if the lender are stopping you potentially being surrounded by student lets and hmos as neighbours, they may well be doing you a favour.

Student houses can be fine of course. They can also be a nightmare. The tenancies will likely change every year and you may well get a much higher churn of residents moving in and out than the owners even know about each semester, with sublets to all kinds of randoms in the summer.

Pington

Knowing the area well, I can kind of see where the mortgage company are coming from. I lived in NG7 for several years as a student and for my first year of work in Nottingham. It was great for the student life but as soon as I settled down I moved away from the really studenty areas and would never have bought there to live as my home. I feel sorry for the non-student residents in those areas, to be honest.

If you're dead set on the house/area (and don't think you'll be sick of the studentiness before you know it) then looking at local lenders as others sugget is a great idea. Otherwise, are you open to other areas? There are lots of lovely non-studenty areas with great links to the City that may suit you longer term and be less problematic.