Every question this site answers, in one searchable list, each one going to the page that carries the source and the check date behind it. Below that are the questions people ask most often whose assumption does not hold for a UK product, and what is true instead. Individual words are in the glossary.
Type what you want to know. Each result goes to the page that answers it, where the figure carries its source and the date it was checked.
Nothing here matches that. Try a shorter word, or look for the term itself in the glossary.
These come up constantly and most of them arrive from American products or from ordinary mortgages. The assumption inside the question does not hold for a UK lifetime mortgage, so the useful answer is the correction rather than a reply.
Being out of work does not stop you. Income is not assessed at all on a lifetime mortgage.
How much you can borrow comes from the age of the youngest owner and from the property, not from earnings or employment. There is no affordability test, because there is nothing to pay each month unless you choose to. A credit search is still carried out.
What is never assessed →Yes, and you do not need to tell anybody. There is no employment condition to breach.
This question comes from mortgages, where a lender assessed your income to decide whether you could keep up the payments. Nothing about your job was assessed here, so nothing about your job can put the plan in breach. What providers do ask to be told about is a change in who lives in the property.
When somebody else lives there →On a standard lifetime mortgage there are no monthly payments to fall behind on.
The interest is added to what you owe instead of being billed to you, which is what rolling up means. You can choose to make payments, and doing so slows or stops the debt growing, but stopping again is allowed on Council-standard plans. The trade is that the debt grows if you pay nothing.
What rolling up actually does →A home equity loan is an American product. UK equity release runs no affordability test, but a credit search is still carried out.
Legal and General publish that they run credit and voters roll searches on all applicants and accept up to four CCJs per application. So credit history is looked at, it is simply not looked at in the way it would be for a loan you had to repay monthly. Each lender sets its own position.
What lenders publish →A HELOC is an American product with no direct UK equivalent. The nearest thing here is a drawdown lifetime mortgage.
With drawdown you are approved for a total and take part of it now, leaving the rest in a reserve to draw later. The important difference from a credit line is the pricing: money you draw later is charged at the rate of the day you draw it, which will not be the rate you see today.
How a reserve is priced →Not at their discretion. A Council-standard plan runs until the last borrower dies or moves permanently into long-term care.
That is one of the product standards members commit to, and it is the difference between this and an ordinary loan that can be recalled. It is a trade body standard rather than legislation, so it applies to plans from members and check that yours is one.
What membership commits them to →These products are secured on the home you live in. A property you let out is not what they are for.
Products commonly require the secured property to be your main residence, subject to each provider having its own rules. If your circumstances are unusual, that is a question for an adviser with the details in front of them rather than one a page can settle.
What gets assessed →The plan is secured on your main residence, so a second property is not a second source of equity release.
The same main residence rule that rules out a let property rules out doing this twice. It does not mean a second property is irrelevant: it is part of what you own, and it is worth raising with an adviser alongside anything you are trying to pay for.
What else there is →Each correction points at a page on this site where the fact is sourced and dated. Checked 10 September 2026.
Short answers to the things that come up most. None of it is advice, and every figure on this page carries its source.
Type it into the box at the top of the page. It searches every editorial question on the site as you type, matching on the question, the page it is answered on and the address of that page, so a word that never appears in the question itself will still find it. With JavaScript switched off the box is not there and every question is printed on the page instead, where the find built into your browser can reach them.
Because that is where the answer belongs, with the source it came from and the date it was checked. Copying every answer onto one page would strand each of them from the evidence behind it, and would duplicate the site against itself, which is bad for a reader and bad for search.
Because for some of the most common questions the honest answer is that the assumption inside them does not hold. Asking what happens if you cannot afford the payments assumes there are payments, and on a standard lifetime mortgage there are none unless you choose to make them. Answering as asked would confirm the misunderstanding while appearing helpful.
The list these came from was drawn largely from American, Canadian and Australian discussion, so it contains home equity loans and lines of credit, neither of which exists in the UK in that form. They are kept and corrected rather than deleted, because people do search for them and nobody else explains why they do not apply here.
Then this site does not answer it yet, and saying so is more useful than a page that pretends otherwise. The glossary explains individual terms, and the guides index groups everything by the situation you are in, which is often a better route in than a single question.
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.