Green Mortgages:
The “Lenders” project brings together the Energy Saving Trust, BRE, the Nationwide Building Society and other big names from the building and finance sectors. Their aim is to prove that if the energy expenditure of a home can be more accurately estimated, then a borrower’s ability to afford their mortgage repayments can be more carefully assessed.
Buying low-energy homes could mean you will get a bigger mortgage:
The idea of the “lenders” project is simple. By replacing broad estimating of energy costs with more accurate ones, banks and building societies can more accurately determine the amount of mortgage a borrower is able to afford. Since more energy-efficient homes have lower bills, customers in low energy houses ought to be able to afford larger mortgage repayments.
There are lots of interesting ideas around at the moment. A study in the US suggested that low-energy homes have a lower risk of default. There’s also been the suggestion that estate agents and surveyors should be valuing energy-efficient homes more highly.
The lenders project is setting out to prove that mortgage lending can be done with more accuracy. Calculations are currently taking a very broad guess at energy costs, but it shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be this way.”
As a mortgage customer, the idea of the project is that if you buy a low energy home, you are likely to be offered a larger maximum mortgage. The project also has ideas around encouraging mortgage products aimed at buying high-energy homes and then improving them.
There has never been a better time to improve your homes energy efficiency so find out what you could be entitled to. It’s so simple to find out if you qualify for a grant or even free installation, just click the “see if I qualify” or “apply now”.
