Laing Easy Form - Mortgage

Judzzy

Hello,

So after a very long journey, we have now found our that the house we want to buy was built with Laing easy form concrete. We want to carry out a building survey and hope that the construction is of good quality but our main concern now is the re sale of the property. We want to buy the house for ourselves and are not planning to sell it before several years but we never know what will happen and if we will have to sell at some point.
My main concerns are:
- Which banks are still lending on these houses? I know of Santander and Halifax, any others?
- If I take a 5 years fixed mortgage will I have a problem to find a new mortgage in 5 years time?
- Are there less and less banks that lend on these type of properties? Is the general trend that there won't be anymore banks who lend on these properties in the future?

I am very cautious about the re sale because as much as I love the house and I think it's perfect for us, I don't want to be stuck in 20 years time and not be able to sell if I need to.
Any advice greatly appreciated, many thanks!

MrsElliot

I can only tell you our experience. The house we wanted to buy back in 2015 was made out of Concrete (Laing Easy form). EA didn't know it was concrete, it was our mortgage broker that pointed it out to us stating that some banks don't like lending on it however Laing Easy Form is one of the better concrete construction methods out there and is quite robust but maintenance is essential. At the time we got a DIP from Santander and all was well, however we got a survey done and found the house had its cavity walls insulated and there was no building regs for this which can be an issue down the line, that and had a few other things on the survey as well as some porky pies the seller told us that made us walk away and buy a more traditional build house.
The concrete house eventually sold about 7 months after we pulled out of the sale so it did sell eventually as for your questions no one really knows what the banks will do in future.

stator

If it was built in 1955 like my Laing Easi-form house, it's been standing for almost 65 years.



They were investigated in 1988 and found to be a sound type of construction:
https://www.thenbs.com/PublicationIndex/documents/details?Pub=BRE&DocID=83830
The report actually mentions that the house is 'over engineered'. If one part of the building had problems, the other parts would cope. The whole thing wouldn't come crumbling down like a house of cards.



I have seen nothing recently that makes me think banks will stop lending on these houses.


When you arrange your survey, just try to find someone who knows a little about them, ie someone a bit older.


I found some exposed steel in the cavity in my house, but it causes no problems.


Having the cavity inspected, including the cavity wall ties is something you might think about doing anyway.

Mai123

We have a similar construction house, and we have never had any issue with mortgages or insurance, it is a lovely solid house and these types have never been on the defective list, it was the pre-fab concrete panel types that had issues, not these but I think people sometimes get them confused. I know all major high street lender have no issue with them, we've personally had mortgages with Halifax and Nationwide.

Don't let it put you off just because it is not brick and block there are hundreds and thousands of this type of house throughout the UK and they buy and sell without issue. We love ours, it so sound proof as well, we never hear the neighbours!