Mortgages: Eligibility

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Paul Scully]

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s important point, which I will come to later. Rent clearly does not give any guarantee for the future but it gives a better guide to creditworthiness, in the sense that people have spent time paying rent regularly, on a monthly basis. As we heard, the petitioner spent £70,000 with little to show for it other than that he paid his bills, whereas obviously, when someone has the aspiration of home ownership, that same £70,000 could have been building up equity. If someone has a good record in one area, they would hope that that, combined with all the other checks that banks need to do, would be good for credit for a mortgage as well.

The Government have doubled their housing budget and are investing £7.1 billion in the expanded affordable homes programme to deliver 225,000 affordable housing starts by March 2021. In addition, the housing White Paper sets out bold new plans to fix the broken housing market and build more homes across England. Starter homes, which are targeted at the first-time buyers we have been talking about, form an important part of the Government’s action to help more than 200,000 people become homeowners.

A £1.2 billion starter homes land fund will be invested to support the preparation of brownfield sites for starter homes and other affordable home ownership tenures. I am delighted that this year we will see the first starter homes being built on brownfield sites across the country. They will be built exclusively for first-time buyers between 23 and 40 years old, at a discount of at least 20% below market value. Alongside that, a new rent-to-buy scheme will help hard-working households to benefit from a discounted rent set flexibly at levels to make it locally affordable so that they can save for a deposit to purchase their home.

Stamp duty means that the average first-time buyer typically faces a tax bill of £11,427 here in the capital according to the Land Registry, which recorded the average price paid by new entrants to the London property market as £428,546. Even a starter flat costing a quarter of a million pounds attracts a stamp duty bill of £2,500. In my view, the Government should aim to take most first-time buyers and some downsizers purchasing smaller properties out of this tax entirely, to reduce the burden on family homes, and to fix anomalies such as those around shared-ownership properties, which are an increasingly popular way to get on the housing ladder.

The evidence is clear: stamp duty, like all transaction taxes, reduces the level of transactions. The effects can be pretty stark. For example, ahead of the buy-to-let surcharge in March 2016, mortgages soared by 71% but then dipped to 60% the month after. That was not just a short-term effect. Six months later, in December 2016, buy-to-let mortgage lending was down by nearly 40% on the year before, whereas other mortgage lending was up.

Introducing the buy-to-let surcharge clearly reduced transaction levels, and the best way to boost them again is to cut stamp duty for homeowners, which should boost transactions and economic growth. By focusing on residential homes, such a cut would also boost home ownership. At the same time, shared ownership—an increasingly popular way to help people buy part of a property—needs stamp duty reform. Currently, the providers of these affordable home ownership properties and their customers often pay twice: providers pay on the whole property and then shared owners pay again when they buy their share. Stamp duty in such cases should be charged only once, making it even more affordable for people to get on the housing ladder.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

In my understanding—I have some involvement in shared ownership—the buyer elects when to pay, and one reason why is that if someone buys a share for, say, £250,000, the stamp duty at that point would be lower than if the price went up in future and they elected to pay at a later stage. If we reform the system, we should at least maintain the choice for the customer, because it works quite well.

[Paul Scully]

My hon. Friend is right that choice is important. I still believe that a simpler tax system would enable the system’s anomalies to be ironed out right at the beginning, rather than each Budget having to iron out any anomalies that come out over time, but I welcome his intervention.

I began by talking about supply, which is the most important thing, in my view. The Government have taken action on that issue. Last year saw the highest number of residential planning permissions being granted on record and the highest level of net housing additions since the recession. However, the average home still costs almost eight times people’s average earnings, making it difficult to get on the housing ladder. The proportion of people living in the private rented sector has doubled since 2000, with more than 2 million working households with below-average incomes spending a third or more of their disposable income on housing. That is why I am encouraged by the vision for housing set out in the White Paper. The starting point must be to build more homes, slowing the rise in housing costs, so it is right that the White Paper sets out measures to plan for the right homes in the right places, to build homes faster and to diversify the housing market.

Even if we can get enough houses, lower fixed costs for homebuyers and provide short-term help through schemes such as Help to Buy, there is still a significant structural issue that many young people, in particular, will face, and that is the difficulty in getting a mortgage. Tenants can be disadvantaged in getting credit beyond mortgages. Millions of people are excluded from affordable credit because they do not have a credit history. For the financially excluded, it is a Catch-22 situation: without a credit score, applicants are declined by mainstream providers and considered riskier customers, but the only way to build a credit score is to have a form of credit, such as a mortgage or credit card, in the first place.

Most people on low incomes manage their limited money carefully, yet banks, utility companies and other retailers can discriminate against them. An estimated 2 million people, many of whom are social housing tenants, take out high-cost loans because they cannot access more affordable credit. The Financial Inclusion Commission estimates what is often called the poverty premium—the extra spent on basic necessities such as gas and electricity, mobile phones, white goods and furniture—to be £1,300.

Big Issue Invest has an interesting initiative called the Rental Exchange that will chime with people who supported the petition. The organisation is working with Experian, the UK’s leading credit reference agency, to prevent low-income people from being caught in a vicious circle of no credit score and no lending. Since 2010, Big Issue Invest and Experian have been working with registered social housing providers to incorporate tenants’ rent payment history into their credit files, with no cost to either the housing provider or the tenant. The data are kept in a secure and compliant way, are not used for marketing purposes and are made available only if the tenancy information is relevant and the tenant has agreed to a credit check, or if it is strictly necessary for an organisation to check information about a tenancy, such as in a case of fraud. Tenants can opt out of the scheme.

More than 150 registered housing providers, including housing associations, local authorities and arm’s length management organisations, are signed up to the Rental Exchange, representing 1.5 million tenants across the UK. Experian has tested the value of adding rent data to tenants’ files for each housing provider that comes on board, working with the provider to ensure that rent payment data are accurate before allowing them to go live. The testing has demonstrated some positive results, including an increase in digital identity authentication rates from 39% to 84% for social tenants when rent data are included in credit files. As well as allowing better deals while shopping, that makes life easier in other matters, such as signing up at a GP surgery or accessing benefits without paper copies of identification. In more than 70% of cases, tenants with no significant arrears have increased their credit score.

As well as tackling financial exclusion among the people on the lowest incomes, the approach can have a significant benefit for young people who might have a reasonable income but have not had the time to build a reasonable history for lenders to consider. Rental data add more weight to a credit file on the register, giving lenders more confidence that the applicant is genuine, and a positive payment history provides a strong indicator of good financial conduct. Lord Bird, founder of The Big Issue, has introduced a private Member’s Bill in the other place, the Creditworthiness Assessment Bill, which considers the wider implications and difficulties of financial exclusion, but I will limit the rest of my remarks to access to mortgages, as per the wording of the petition.

First-time buyers are much more likely to have been living in rented accommodation now than 20 years ago—66%, compared with 39%. Rent in London may have fallen over the last few months, but with a Greater London average rent of £1,564, the total amount spent on housing is still a huge proportion of the average household income, so it is hardly a surprise that so many people saw the suggestion in the petition as worthy of further consideration. I am pleased that the Residential Landlords Association supports the petition, although it expressed some concerns about the Rental Exchange system, as smaller landlords must go through another layer of bureaucracy in order to be included: their rents must first be paid to a “Credit Ladder” before being passed on to them. The RLA expressed concern that that muddies the water about who chases rent arrears and distances landlords further from tenants.

Although those issues can be overcome, the concerns point to the fact that even a seemingly simple move would need to be carefully considered so as not to create any negative unintended consequences. Clearly, the last thing that anyone would want is for lending to be relaxed to the point that triggered the mortgage market review in the first place. Back in 2010, the Financial Services Authority found that expectations of ever-increasing house prices and the ability to pass on risk to others led to relaxed lending criteria and increased risk-taking.

There is nothing in the petition to suggest greater risk taking; in fact, the opposite is the case. Having a more rounded financial history for applicants can lead to more informed decision-making by lenders. That transparency works both ways, and could have a negative impact on future applications for some. There are many other factors that lenders must consider, such as long-term income stability. Homeowners have other costs that renters do not have to pay, such as redecoration, insurance and so on. Maintaining a home is not cheap, especially when it comes to one-off but necessary maintenance such as roof repairs. House purchasing is a long-term commitment, and interest rates can rise more erratically than rents.

The Petitions Committee arranged a forum on the Money Saving Expert website, which 1,400 people viewed and a few people commented on. One person expressed concern that letting agents have too much power over tenants as it is, but the majority of commenters were largely supportive of an approach like the one mentioned in the petition. Some people wondered why Government needed to be involved in the first place, a sentiment with which I have always had sympathy. I am old enough to remember Ronald Reagan’s nine most feared words:

“I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”

The Budget is coming up. I make a belated plea to the Minister to take the feedback from the 147,000 people who have signed the petition and consider moving towards a solution in the forthcoming Budget. When he replies, can he let us know whether he thinks that there is a market-based solution that we can unlock with our world-leading fintech businesses? Petition Committee members always say that an e-petition debate is not the end of the petition process but the start of a campaign. Including rent payments in the assessment of mortgages is not without its possible negatives, but I believe that it is well worth considering. I suspect that a market-based solution will have the flexibility required to make it work; brief legislation cannot easily change as the market develops. I hope that the Minister and the Government will consider the petition seriously and do what they can.

I remember the joy of buying my first house, and the sense of freedom and achievement. I am now at an age when my children, the eldest older than I was when I first picked up those house keys, are looking at the options open to them with some concern and trepidation. Let us ensure that first-time buyers have every chance of getting on the housing ladder, fulfilling the aspiration that so many of us have had the good fortune to realise. Let us do what we can in this area as another piece of the jigsaw in supporting a new generation of homeowners.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone; I think it is for the first time.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) on responding to the petition, which is on a very important subject, and I also congratulate other hon. Members who have spoken.

I need to declare my interests, as recorded in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I still have an interest in a company that brokers mortgages; I was a mortgage broker myself, and I hold the mortgage advice qualification, although I certainly do not practise day to day any more.

My immediate reaction to the proposition in the petition is, as others have done, to express my sympathy to those people who have signed it, and my understanding of their huge frustration at being unable to get on the property ladder and achieve their aspiration, which most of us in this Chamber have probably achieved and which previous generations have perhaps taken for granted, namely to own a home—their first home—so they can build a life for themselves. Indeed, we can have huge sympathy with the person who says they have paid £70,000 in rent.

My first point, based on my experience, is that rent payments are taken into account. We must distinguish between the initial decision in principle on application, which is normally automated and credit-scored, and further underwriting on a full application. If I want to have a rough sense of what I can borrow, I might get an agreement in principle from my bank for a certain amount. If I then find a property, have an offer for it accepted and go through the full application, as it is called, in my experience it is very rare, particularly if someone is a first-time buyer, that applicants would not have to provide bank statements. That was happening in 2004, when I started as a broker, and the main thing that underwriters are looking for on a bank statement is the consistent monthly payment of rent.

It is true that underwriters look at other things, and it is possible to tell a lot from a bank statement. I remember that before mortgages were heavily tightened up after the crunch—quite rightly so—underwriters would come back and say, “Can you ask them what these payments are?” and it would be discovered that they were for a debt that was not recorded on their credit reference, for example a debt from a casino. I am afraid that such a case would be declined.

As the hon. Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) said, we do not have in-branch underwriting, typically; those days are gone. However, I think there is—and there should be—still a lot of manual underwriting on first-time buyer cases. The other point to make is that it has to be said clearly that someone paying their rent on time is not enough, because of other factors that may be in the background. Someone may pay their rent but be behind on paying off their credit card or in paying a utility bill.

The House of Commons Library briefing states that the Financial Services Authority—now the Financial Conduct Authority—conducted a

“detailed study into the predictive ability of applicants with poor credit history and found it to be a significant predictor and hence determinant of lending decisions: ‘Our findings show that the dominant characteristic present in all of the highest-risk lending combinations is whether the borrower has an impaired credit history.’”

If someone pays their rent, does not have bad credit and is on the electoral role—important for the credit score—they will probably get an agreement in principle. They will then go to a full application and their bank statements and so on will be assessed and the person who has the county court judgments and the defaults will, of course, be declined at that point, which is absolutely right.

I have mixed feelings about the exact call of the petition, but I have considerable sympathy with it and think that it presents a really good opportunity. I want to make a few points on the wider issue of mortgage availability. This month I received a copy of IFA Magazine, the main article of which is called, “Never Say Never Again”. That is a reference not to the “Thunderball” remake but to the possible re-emergence of sub-prime lending, which is a very serious issue. I quote Michael Wilson, who wrote the article:

“Quietly, almost surreptitiously, ‘impaired credit’ mortgages are coming back into the game—it’s just that you don’t see them advertised by the big players. Instead, alternative banks and pseudo-banks such as Masthaven or Pepper Homeloans or Magellan or Bluestone or Kensington Mortgages…are offering carefully risk-graded home loans to people who’ve had anything from a missed phone contract payment to a County Court Judgment.”

I remember, back in the days before the crash, the availability of sub-prime mortgages. There was an entire menu of grades of what were called adverse mortgages: light adverse, medium adverse and heavy adverse. Heavy adverse is, basically, “Do you have a pulse?” That was what it was like in those days. Extraordinarily, people who had bad credit, stretched affordability and a low deposit, wanting an interest-only deal, could get a mortgage, often even at a relatively competitive rate. The Government, through the regulator and the prudential authorities, should be extremely cautious about any return to that sort of risky lending to people who have failed to pay significant credit. Of course, there will always be discretion on relatively minor credit misdemeanours and so on.

We must think about greater access for, for example, the self-employed. I was on the Work and Pensions Committee before the election, and we had an investigation into the rise of the gig economy and a new breed of worker—they are called “workers”, with a capital “w”—who are self-employed but work very regular shifts and arguably have all the characteristics of employees but no employment contract. In my view, there have been abuses, because such workers do not get the security an employee would expect. In those cases, there is an argument that lenders should have much more discretion and we should not automatically say, as is usually the case with the self-employed, “Well, if you don’t have three years’ accounts, sorry, you can’t get a mortgage”. The world of work is changing, and lending needs to change with it.

The other issue, which I think will become even more important and on which we will get more correspondence, is lending into retirement. That is not necessarily lending to people who have retired; it is the opposite. If someone applies for their first mortgage at 50, as people do at the moment and will be doing more in the future, to defray the costs somewhat they might want a 30-year term. However, that would take them to 80, which is currently simply not be possible. Lenders would refuse outright to do that in almost any situation—even if someone had a gilt-edged pension agreed. We need to consider whether that is reasonable, given that we are going to be living longer and have a much higher statutory retirement age. Although we should always be as prudent as possible with lending, it is perfectly in order that someone, particularly someone younger, takes a longer term, perhaps even 40 years. For a 25-year-old, a 40-year term up to 65 on a capital repayment basis is perfectly sensible, obviously subject to all the other criteria being met.

Regarding lending in retirement, I went to a fringe event at a conference two years ago and the lenders were already thinking about people who have retired on good incomes. They might be 30 years from death and want access to credit. That will become a growing issue.

The point I most want to make, and about which I feel most strongly, is buy to let. My first speech as an MP, after my maiden speech, was on buy to let, and I said that we should consider things like a stamp duty surcharge and a tax on the interest relief. To my surprise, the previous Chancellor had the courage to introduce those measures—they are not exactly popular with some Conservative voters. We have mentioned the person who paid £70,000 in rent: they are paying a mortgage, just not their mortgage. They are almost certainly paying the landlord’s buy-to-let mortgage.

I have been to many events with buy-to-let landlords and defended these issues. I have nothing against those who invest in property. On the contrary, with the pensions system as it has been, it is understandable that people should invest, as their pension, in what they see as the safest asset, particularly when it has reliable rent income. However, it remains scandalous that a first-time buyer can only get a capital repayment mortgage, which is absolutely right—if someone takes out a debt they repay that debt, it is as simple as that—but it is still possible, almost as the default, to take out an interest-only mortgage for a buy to let. The criteria have tightened, but that issue is so significant because to calculate whether someone can obtain a buy-to-let mortgage, the key issue is coverage, which is that the rent covers the mortgage by, for example, 125%. That criterion will be met far more easily with an interest-only mortgage than a capital repayment one.

In my view, the bubble we built up in the property market would not have happened to the same degree if we had insisted on capital repayment, because far fewer landlords would have passed the test, prices would not have risen so steeply and some of the measures we have had to pass to calm the buy-to-let market might not even have been necessary. It beggars belief that we expect first-time buyers to repay the capital—as they should—but not landlords, who may own many properties.

We must remember that there is a moral issue here. When the banks crashed on the back of their own irresponsibility, the bail-out was funded by a national debt that is held by everyone. The property values of all those who own property, ultimately, were bailed out. The bail-out kept the bubble growing, in fact. If it had not been for the bail-out, we would have had an extremely deep recession, so it was the right thing to do, but we must recognise that it maintained the values of large portfolios—of all those who own property—but it is a cost borne by everyone, whether they rent or pay a mortgage. We therefore have a moral duty to try to find the best ways to encourage access to the property market and to overcome those problems, but we must not do that by returning to bad ways and ditching prudence.