Robin Johnson, managing director, Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward Surveyors; David Whittaker, managing director, Mortgages for Business; John Heron, managing director, Paragon Mortgages; Gareth Lewis, national sales manager, Cheval; Rob Jupp, managing director, BrightStar Financial; Ray Boulger, senior technical director, John Charcol; David Finlay, intermediary channel director, Barclays; Andy Young, CEO, The Business Mortgage Company; John Malone, chairman, PMS; James Prosser, event director, Mortgage Business Expo; Alex Hammond, PR Brand and communications manager, Kensington; Alan Cleary, managing director of Precise Mortgages; Mark Bullard, head of sales, NatWest Intermediary Solutions
yourself that question unless you can get a mortgage. If you have the choice then now seems like a good time to buy – values are 20% off the peak, income multiples are down and the downside on house prices is probably negligible. Andy Young: The other question is whether attitudes to renting are changing. Twenty years ago it was drummed into all of us to get on the housing ladder as soon as possible but nowadays I don’t think owning is always the first choice. People are now choosing to rent rather than buy and those who are renting are doing so for longer than ever before. JH: For our generation renting privately was often the tenure of last resort and the quality of property in the sector reflected that. That’s no longer the case. The very fact that the average age of an
unassisted first time buyer is 37 now simply underlines the point that people are choosing to rent because it offers choice, flexibility and value in housing in a way that certainly the social rented sector doesn’t and increasingly the owner occupied sector doesn’t. David Finlay: I agree. The average first time buyer now needs a £28,000 deposit. People are leaving university with a debt, going into a job that may not be stable and having to find that amount of money on top. The reality is it will take longer to get to the point where you have a choice about whether to rent or buy. The private rented sector is consequently going to continue to grow over the next few years. John Malone: There is some government meddling going on at the moment that will influence the balance between renting and buying. There was
a vast increase in the amount of money lent between 2000 and 2007 but the proportion of homeownership didn’t increase at all – I think that’s created a problem in the eyes of the Treasury, government and Bank of England. Controlling the proportion of people in the UK who used housing as a way to get rich through the 90s and 00s is something they’re thinking about I believe. DF: Who’s to say that 17% or 20% of people renting privately is wrong and actually the balance we’ve had in the past wasn’t right? It’s a question we should think about asking ourselves. Quite frankly, it’s possible that a lot of first time buyers were given mortgages they shouldn’t have been and the tightening of the market has put more emphasis on the private rented sector growing.
mortgage introducer FEBRUARY 2011 37
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