Sell an Unmortgageable Property: Short Lease, Defects, Non-Standard

“Cash buyers only.” It’s a phrase that appears on thousands of UK property listings, and for the seller, it’s often an unwelcome discovery. The moment your property needs that qualifier, the buyer pool shrinks by 70–80%, prices soften, and sales stretch from months to years.

We’re one of the buyers that phrase is aimed at. We buy the properties that mortgage lenders won’t touch, because we’re not a mortgage lender: we’re a principal cash buyer. Our money is our own, and our criteria are our own. In the great majority of cases, RPJ is the buyer. Just occasionally a property is so specialised, serious structural damage, for instance, that it suits another buyer better than it suits us, and they can genuinely do better for you than we can. When that happens we say so, and with your permission we introduce you: one introduction, to one named firm, never a list. Where they go on to buy, we sometimes receive an introduction fee from them. You never pay us anything, and nothing about you is shared without your say-so.

The problems we buy around

Most “cash buyers only” properties fall into a handful of categories. The most common ones now have their own page, with the detail and the pricing for each:

• Short-lease flats: leases under about 70 years that mainstream lenders decline. We buy with the lease as it stands, with no need to extend first.
• Non-standard construction: concrete, prefab, steel-framed and timber-framed homes (Airey, Cornish, Wates, BISF and the rest). We buy them repaired, certified, or as-built.
• Subsidence and structural movement: historic and underpinned, or active and ongoing. Both are within our scope.
• Japanese knotweed: treated, untreated, or just discovered. The plant is not a deal-breaker for us.
• Fire damage: we buy in whatever condition the fire has left the property, repairs undone.
• Cladding and no EWS1: flats in blocks with B2-rated cladding, no EWS1, or remediation that has stalled. We buy with the building’s position exactly as it is.
• Derelict, empty or abandoned property: long-term empties, uninhabitable houses, and property that has been stripped or vandalised. No clearing or securing first.
• A sale that fell through on the survey: if a buyer’s lender has just pulled out because of what the survey found, that page is written for exactly that moment.

We also buy around problems that do not have their own page:

• Legal title defects: absent freeholders, broken title, access disputes, or contested enfranchisement. We buy “as is” rather than requiring the title to be perfected first. See title deeds.
• Environmental and location factors: former mining areas, contaminated land, high flood risk, or nearby infrastructure that unsettles valuers.

Severe damp and flood damage

Damp is one of the most common reasons a survey turns a sale sour, and one of the least understood. A surveyor’s damp meter reading, a note about “rising damp” or “penetrating damp”, or visible mould in a bedroom is often enough for a lender to ask for a specialist report and a retention, and for a nervous buyer to walk. In older properties, particularly solid-wall Victorian and Edwardian houses, some damp is close to inevitable, and much of what is diagnosed as rising damp turns out to be condensation, a failed gutter, a bridged damp course or a raised garden level. Some of it, though, is real and expensive: rotten joists, saturated plaster, timber decay behind the skirting.

We buy houses with damp of any kind, diagnosed or not. We work out what is actually causing it and what it will cost to put right, and that cost is what shapes the offer, rather than the word on the survey.

Flood damage is the same problem in a sharper form. After a flood, insurers may refuse cover or price it out of reach, lenders will not lend without cover, and the property becomes cash-only until the building has dried out and been made good. We buy flood-damaged property as it stands, with the drying and reinstatement still to do, and we can complete before any of that work has started.

Unusual covenants and restrictions

Some properties are perfectly sound but carry something in the title that stops a lender or a buyer’s solicitor in their tracks: a restrictive covenant that limits use or alteration, an agricultural or occupancy restriction, a right of way through the garden, an overage clause, a flying freehold, or a lease with an unusual term that no lender’s panel will accept. These issues rarely affect how the property is lived in, but they narrow the market to buyers who understand them and can take the risk on.

We buy property with title complications as it stands. Where an indemnity policy solves the problem, the effect on the offer is small. Where it genuinely limits what the property can be used for, or what it could be resold for, that is reflected in the figure and explained in writing. See restrictive covenant in the glossary for the most common form.

How we price an unmortgageable property

Our approach is to start with the open-market comparable value of a hypothetical equivalent property without the issue, then apply a specific discount for the specific issue:

The ranges depend on the specifics. We explain each component in our written offer.

Offers on unmortgageable property typically land between 70% and 88% of hypothetical-mortgageable market value. The market for these properties is thinner than for standard stock, and the specific risk factors add cost to us, but we try to pay at the upper end of the range wherever possible.

What we need from you at offer stage

• Postcode and address.
• The specific issue (or issues) that make the property unmortgageable. Be candid. We’ll find out in due diligence regardless, and early disclosure speeds the process.
• Any paperwork you have: EWS1 certificate, structural survey, subsidence monitoring records, lease documents, indemnity policies, knotweed management plans.
• What a previous buyer’s lender said, if a sale has already fallen through for lender reasons. If that has just happened, our page on a sale falling through on the survey is written for you.

With that, a written offer within 24 hours is realistic.

Related terms

• Cash buyer: what “cash buyers only” actually means.
• Leasehold vs freehold: why short leases become unmortgageable.
• EWS1 form: the cladding certification affecting many flats.
• Restrictive covenant: one source of title defects.
• Conveyancing: still required, even on cash-only sales.

Start an offer on your unmortgageable property

If a lender has declined, or if you know your property has one of the issues above, share the details. We’ll come back within 24 hours with a realistic, written offer and an explanation of how we arrived at it.