Tenure, construction, occupation, condition, location and saleability all get assessed, and providers disagree with each other about every one of them. This is the index to the guides, and the place the pattern across them is set out.
13 guides, each built the same way: what one or more lenders actually publish, quoted with the date we opened it, and what you can go and establish yourself.
Equity release may involve a lifetime mortgage, secured against your property, or a home reversion plan. It will reduce the value of your estate and impact funding long-term care.
Every page here exists because somebody arrives with a specific worry about their own home, and every other site sends them straight to a contact form. We cannot tell you whether your property will be accepted, and neither can anybody who has not been to look at it.
What we can do is show you what lenders actually publish, in their own words and with the date we opened the document, and tell you what to go and find out. That is a genuinely useful hour, and it is free.
It quotes what a lender actually publishes, in their words, with the date we opened the document.
It says which provider and which product, because criteria differ between products from the same lender.
It tells you what to go and establish yourself, most of which costs nothing.
It never tells you whether your property would be accepted, because that is a lending decision.
Where we could not open a source, it says so and does not publish the figure anyway.
Each one carries the date its sources were last opened. If a page is not here, we have not written it yet, and we would rather say that than publish something we cannot source.
Choosing a feature only filters the list below. It does not assess your home, and nothing you choose is stored or sent anywhere.
Writing these guides turned up things that are not visible from any one of them, and that almost nobody publishes. Each is quoted and dated on the page it belongs to.
One lender publishes four different sets of annexe rules for its own four products. Who may live there, whether internal access is needed, and whether it can be let all change depending on which product you are placed on.
The annexe guide →A surveying standard and a lender can be years apart. RICS took the seven-metre knotweed measure out in 2022; one lender's live criteria still use it.
The knotweed guide →A timber frame built after 1960 is accepted, one built between 1900 and 1960 is declined, and one built before 1900 is referred. The oldest houses do better than the middle-aged ones.
The construction guide →One lender asks how much of your street is privately owned before it will lend on an ex-council home. Fifty per cent on one product, sixty on another.
The ex-council guide →Above five acres, one lender values only the house and its immediate garden. The land is not counted, which changes the arithmetic rather than the answer.
The land and ties guide →The pylon rule everybody repeats is a distance in metres. The criteria we could actually open do not use a distance at all: they ask whether it stands inside your boundary.
The pylons guide →Lenders disagree with each other, and one lender can disagree with itself across its own product range. That is why no page, ours included, can tell you whether your property qualifies, and why the person to ask is an adviser who can see all of the criteria at once.
Tell you your property is acceptable, eligible or impossible to finance. That is a lending decision, it is regulated activity we are not authorised for, and it would be untrue anyway: criteria differ between providers, differ between products from the same provider, and change.
They will also not tell you to change your home. Not to take out a kitchen, extend a lease, or strip insulation out of a roof. Each of those is advice about a legal or physical transaction in service of a product we cannot recommend.
Equity release may involve a lifetime mortgage, secured against your property, or a home reversion plan. It will reduce the value of your estate and impact funding long-term care.
Short answers to the things that come up most. None of it is advice, and every figure on this page carries its source.
Not by itself. Almost everything in this cluster is a question a lender asks rather than an answer it has already given, and the published criteria differ between lenders and between products from the same lender.
Because different lenders publish different rules, and this site quotes them rather than averaging them. Where two providers disagree, both positions are shown with the date each was opened.
No. We have not seen it, criteria change, and a lending decision about a specific house is not something a page can make. What these pages do is tell you what is actually assessed, so you can find out before anybody visits.
Find the guide for the feature you have and gather the evidence it lists. Several of those things you can establish yourself in minutes, and arriving with them makes the first conversation much shorter.
Equity release may involve a lifetime mortgage, secured against your property, or a home reversion plan. It will reduce the value of your estate and impact funding long-term care.
One qualified equity release adviser. They will go through your figures and tell you if there is a better answer. It costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity and Vimeo. Say no and none of them loads. What each one stores, and what Microsoft use theirs for.