Wayhome reduces day one yield requirements

Wayhome has reduced its minimum day one yield requirements, which gives first-time buyers who can afford to rent a home worth up to 10 times their income the opportunity to gradually buy it.

For a couple with a gross household income of £50,000 per year, this means they would be limited to a loan of £175,000.

Assuming this couple could raise a £25,000 deposit, the most this couple could afford with a conventional mortgage is a property worth £200,000.

However, Wayhome said that if the same couple were to use its Gradual Homeownership product, they could afford a property worth up to £500,000 without any increase to their deposit.

Nigel Purves, chief executive at Wayhome, said: “We are delighted to be able to give customers unprecedented access, today, to properties they simply couldn’t dream of buying with a mortgage.

“Gradual Homeownership is a truly unique product, and that is why we’re the first in the UK to be able to offer people homes worth up to ten times their income, with just a 5% deposit.

“And we can still do this in a 100% prudent, sustainable way – there’s no mortgage debt in Gradual Homeownership, and rental payments are not linked to interest rates, so there’s absolutely zero risk of negative equity for our customers.

“There is a cruel distortion at the heart of our housing market: a person or family might be able to comfortably afford the rent on a particular property - yet a lender decides they can’t afford to buy it.

"At Wayhome we’re changing this by helping people (gradually) buy the sort of home they could only otherwise afford to rent.

“With house prices rising more than twice as quickly as wages, its clear the affordability crisis within the UK housing market is only going to get worse.

"We hope that by offering a genuinely game-changing alternative, we can help thousands more people get onto the ladder, in their ‘forever home’, today.”