Overzealous surveyor?

Rudess

I'm in the process of buying a property and letting out my current property. 
My mortgage for the purchase been approved but I have issues with the lender regarding the buy-to-let mortgage. 
My current property is a terraced house, with a conseravtory at the back (smaller than 30sq meters). The kitchen opens with a glass door into the conservatory, there is also a window with a ventilation between kitchen and conservatory.

A surveyor came for valuation recently and advised the lender my house isn't a suitable security because according to him 'there is no natural light or ventilation into the kitchen, and claim it's a breach of building regulatoins.

Naturally I'm shocked, because there is natural light coming from conservatory into kitchen (there is no other way for natural light as it's terraced house and I can't drill the ceiling as we have a bedroom above. Also we do have ventilation and the measurements are even bigger than what is required.
I'm really annoyed as I was never advised I needed building regulations and I had two respected banks giving me residential mortgage since I purchased the property and they had surveyors valuing property too. 
Is this a case of an overzealous surveyor, and a bank which is happy to take 500 for valuation but not to give a mortgage?
Are BTL mortgage stricter than residential in terms of regulations?

[Deleted User]

Some lenders might just have different criteria than others.   Some lenders go with the line of wanting it to be 'readily sellable in the market' and some have tight criteria of what types of property they do and dont want,


Now you know this is potentially an issue, your broker can send pictures or details to their business development team who usually have a pre-valuation dept you can take a call on this prior to application. 

K_S

Rudess said:

I'm in the process of buying a property and letting out my current property. 
My mortgage for the purchase been approved but I have issues with the lender regarding the buy-to-let mortgage. 
My current property is a terraced house, with a conseravtory at the back (smaller than 30sq meters). The kitchen opens with a glass door into the conservatory, there is also a window with a ventilation between kitchen and conservatory.

Given that it's a BTL mortgage you are looking for, it's likely to do with how the lender assesses the desirability to prospective tenants. For instance lenders may specify "must be fit for letting at the time of valuation" or decline properties "that are likely to have poor demand from tenants" and different lenders will interpret such conditions in different ways.

Unfortunately, these kind of issues are unlikely to come to light (either to the broker or yourself as the borrower) prior to valuation as lenders don't publish valuation criteria in clear detail.

Based purely on what you have said, unless there are major issues in relation to the layout, I doubt that this will be a showstopper. Do let us know how your broker gets on.

MWT

As long as the conservatory has sufficient ventilation to the outside to cover the kitchen you should be able to vent from the kitchen into the conservatory.

There are some regulations covering ventilating, lighting etc. that apply to properties intended for rental and so would come into play for a BTL mortgage that wouldn't have been a consideration for a residential mortgage, so perhaps this is where the problems have arisen...