The new Economic Secretary and Housing Minister will host major high street banks today as the Government aims to relaunch its pledge on increasing homeownership and delivering more affordable housing.
Lucy Rigby and Matthew Pennycook will call on lenders to make first-time buyers their top priority, taking advantage of the Leeds Reforms announced by the Chancellor in July to help more people with small deposits and low incomes get a mortgage.
Those changes are expected to help up to 36,000 extra first-time buyers secure their own home in the first year alone, while the Financial Conduct Authority is simplifying mortgage lending rules such as affordability checks so that more people can borrow within safe and regulated limits.
The roundtable follows a meeting last week with building societies, where lenders explained how some of their most innovative products could help thousands more struggling to get on the housing ladder, including safely rolling out no and low deposit mortgages for customers with strong credit ratings.
The Building Societies Association also shared its working on a campaign to raise awareness of these new initiatives, tackling the gap in customer knowledge and helping more buyers realise they can afford homes they thought were out of reach. The Government said it will continue to explore how it can back this effort.
At the first roundtable on the 3 September, senior representatives from the Building Societies Association, Skipton, Yorkshire, Cambridge, Leeds, Bath and Coventry Building Societies were in attendance.
Representatives from Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Nationwide, Natwest, Santander and UK Finance will be at the latest meeting.
Lucy Rigby, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, said: “Helping first-time buyers onto the housing ladder is central to our Plan for Change.
“That’s why I’m bringing lenders together to make mortgages more accessible and highlight new options for first-time buyers so more people can finally own their own home.”