The Property Problems Study: Which Property Issues Lose You the Most Lenders
See which property problems draw the most published refusals, and which ones lenders quietly say nothing at all about.
Quick Answer
Of the 122 property and construction questions Manor Mortgages Direct tracks, the issues that lose the most lenders are about use and occupation, not structure. Live and work units drew a published refusal from 15 of the 19 residential lenders tracked, checked September 2026.
The problems buyers fear tend to fare better. Japanese knotweed drew 13 lenders who will consider it against 2 who publish a refusal, from the 19 asked. Flying freehold drew 16 who will consider and none who refuse. Agricultural ties, by contrast, drew 13 published refusals from the same 19.
"Will consider" means the lender's published criteria do not exclude the property type. It is not an offer, and every application is assessed individually, with the valuer's report deciding the case in front of it. The counts describe only the residential lenders whose published criteria Manor Mortgages Direct tracks, not the whole market. Lenders are anonymised throughout.
Reviewed by Ben Stephenson, FCA-authorised mortgage adviser (FRN 496907) · 25+ years' experience · 4.9★ on Google. Updated: 9 September 2026.
Key Points
Live and work units: 15 of 19 publish a refusal
Japanese knotweed: 13 of 19 will consider
Knock through next door: 11 of 19 silent
Table of Contents
The property problems people fear are not the ones that lose lenders
Ask a room of buyers which property problems frighten lenders and the same list comes back every time: listed buildings, non-standard construction, Japanese knotweed, spray foam under the roof, a flying freehold, a flat over a takeaway. The published criteria say close to the opposite. The issues that actually strip out the most lenders are the ones almost nobody worries about in advance, because they are about how a property is used or held rather than how it was built.
Of the 122 property and construction questions Manor Mortgages Direct tracks, Japanese knotweed drew 13 lenders who will consider it and 2 who publish a refusal from the 19 lenders tracked, while live and work units drew 15 published refusals from the same 19, checked September 2026.
Flying freehold makes the point most sharply. Of the 19 lenders tracked, 16 will consider a flying freehold and none publish a refusal, with 3 giving no published position at all. It is one of the few property quirks that has a reputation far worse than its criteria treatment.
Listed buildings split by grade rather than being a single problem. Grade 2 listed drew 8 lenders who will consider and 1 who publishes a refusal, with 10 giving no published position. Grade 1 listed is harder but still not a wall: 4 will consider, 5 publish a refusal and 10 say nothing, which is the pattern you would expect for a rare property type that most criteria pages do not bother to address. If you are working through a listed building purchase, the grade matters more to the count than the listing itself.
Spray foam insulation to the underside of the roof, the issue that generated more press coverage than any other in recent years, sits almost exactly in the middle. Of the 19 lenders tracked, 7 will consider it, 7 publish a refusal and 5 give no published position, checked September 2026. That is a genuinely divided question rather than a closed door, and it is a very different shape from the use based questions below.
Property issue | Lenders publishing a refusal, of the 19 asked, checked September 2026 |
Live and work units | 15 |
Agricultural ties | 13 |
Service charge treatment | 13 |
Farm or smallholding | 12 |
Crofted property | 10 |
Property or investment clubs | 10 |
Overage | 10 |
Purchase of land | 10 |
Freehold flats | 10 |
Sheltered accommodation | 9 |
Every row in that table is a question about tenure, use or occupation. Not one of them is about brick, steel, timber or damp. That is the single most useful thing this dataset has to say to anyone valuing a property or advising a buyer early.
Use, occupation and land: the group that quietly loses the most lenders
The land, ties and rural group is where the refusals cluster. These are questions where the lender is not worried about whether the building will stand up, but about whether the security can be sold to an ordinary owner occupier in an ordinary market. A restriction on who may live there, or a use that mixes home with business, narrows the resale pool, and the criteria respond accordingly.
Of the 19 residential lenders whose published criteria Manor Mortgages Direct tracks and which were tracked about agricultural ties, 13 publish a refusal and 2 will consider, checked September 2026.
Live and work units are the most refused single question in the entire property bank. Seventeen of the 19 lenders tracked publish a position at all, and of those, 15 are refusals against 2 who will consider. Only 2 give no published position, which tells you this is a question lenders have deliberately answered rather than ignored.
Farms and smallholdings follow the same logic with slightly thinner data. Of the 19 asked, 12 publish a refusal and 1 will consider, with 6 giving no published position at all. Crofted properties are thinner still: 11 publish a position, split 10 refusals to 1 will consider, and 8 are silent, so the working denominator here is really 11 rather than 19.
Land itself divides the market. Purchase of land drew 10 published refusals against 4 who will consider, from the 19 asked, with 5 silent. Lending against land already owned is a little softer, at 8 refusals to 5 who will consider and 6 silent. Neither is a question you would want to discover late.
Occupation restrictions travel with the applicant as well as the property. Applicants living in tied accommodation drew 6 published refusals against 4 who will consider, with 9 of the 19 giving no published position. Sheltered accommodation drew 9 refusals to 2 who will consider, with 8 silent, so the published positions there number only 11 of 19.
Mixed use and part commercial property sits closer to the middle than the rural questions. Of the 19 asked, 7 will consider and 7 publish a refusal, with 5 giving no published position, checked September 2026. Property with land attached, as opposed to land bought on its own, is barely a problem at all: 16 will consider and none publish a refusal.
Flats and leasehold: freehold flats and service charges do the damage
The flats group behaves nothing like its reputation either. New build flats, converted flats and ex local authority flats are all comfortably considered, while two questions that rarely reach a buyer's radar do most of the narrowing.
Of the 19 residential lenders whose published criteria Manor Mortgages Direct tracks, 10 publish a refusal on freehold flats and 8 will consider them, checked September 2026.
That is the highest refusal count of any question in the flats group, and only 1 lender of the 19 has no published position, so it is a question the market has genuinely settled a view on. The related question of a freehold house containing self contained flats is far less settled: 3 will consider, 5 publish a refusal and 11 of the 19 say nothing at all.
Service charge treatment is the other quiet one. Of the 19 asked, 13 publish a refusal, 2 will consider and 1 answers with a figure or rule rather than a yes or no, leaving 3 with no published position. The refusals here are about how the charge is structured and treated rather than about the flat itself, which is why it so rarely comes up in conversation before an application.
Ordinary flats, by contrast, are ordinary. Flats that are not new build drew 19 of 19 who will consider, with no refusals and no silence. New build flats drew 17 who will consider and 1 refusal. Flats in a converted building drew 16 who will consider and none who refuse, and ex local authority flats drew 14 who will consider against 1 refusal.
Shape and access matter more than tenure once you are past the freehold question. Flats with deck access drew 8 who will consider and 5 refusals, with 6 silent. Studio flats drew 11 who will consider and 3 refusals, and Tyneside flats with cross leases drew 10 who will consider and 4 refusals.
Serviced flats are the harder end of the group. Of the 19 lenders tracked, 2 will consider, 8 publish a refusal and 9 give no published position, checked September 2026. The published field there is only 10 lenders wide, so the count of refusals matters more than the raw number suggests.
Commercial neighbours are less damaging than the folklore suggests. A flat above commercial premises generally drew 11 who will consider and 1 refusal, from the 19 asked, with 7 silent. Narrow it to flats above food outlets specifically and it tightens to 4 who will consider and 6 refusals, with 9 silent, which is the sharpest illustration in the study of how much a single word in the question changes the count.
Ground rent questions are dominated by silence rather than by refusal. Doubling ground rent drew 5 who will consider and 3 refusals, with 11 of the 19 silent. Escalating ground rent drew 6 who will consider and 1 refusal, with 12 silent. Retail price index linked ground rent drew 9 who will consider and no refusals, with 10 silent.
Construction type is far less binary than its reputation
Non-standard construction is treated in the trade press as a single category with a single answer. The data does not support that. Of the 19 lenders tracked about non-standard construction as a general question, 11 will consider, 2 publish a refusal and 6 have no published position, which is a wide and workable field rather than a closed one.
Of the 19 residential lenders whose published criteria Manor Mortgages Direct tracks, 3 will consider a British Iron and Steel Federation property and 9 publish a refusal, while 14 will consider timber framed construction and 1 publishes a refusal, checked September 2026.
That gap is the whole story of the construction group. Timber frame and steel frame are effectively mainstream: steel framed construction drew 12 who will consider against 3 refusals, with 4 silent. Precast reinforced concrete drew 10 who will consider and 5 refusals. Mundic block drew 9 who will consider and 5 refusals, with 5 silent, which is more open than most people expect for a regional defect type.
The specific prefabricated types are where the refusals concentrate. BISF properties drew 9 refusals against 3 who will consider, with 7 of the 19 giving no published position, so the published field is only 12 lenders wide. Single skin brick and block work drew 6 refusals to 4 who will consider, with 9 silent.
Era matters within a single construction system. Wimpey No Fines and Laing Easi Form built before 1945 drew 6 who will consider and 4 refusals, while the same systems built after 1945 drew 9 who will consider and 2 refusals. Same walls, different decade, materially different count, which is the sort of distinction a general enquiry about non-standard construction will never surface on its own.
Roofs and structural repairs are milder than the construction systems. Flat roofs drew 11 who will consider and no refusals, with 8 silent. Underpinned properties drew 7 who will consider and 1 refusal, with 11 of the 19 giving no published position, checked September 2026.
It is also worth noting how many construction questions are answered with a rule rather than a verdict. On acceptable construction types, 15 of the 19 answer with a list or rule rather than a yes or no, and on minimum property condition, 15 of 19 do the same. Those questions cannot be counted as refusals or acceptances at all, and this study does not try to force them into either column.
Environmental risk produces silence far more often than refusal
Environmental questions are the ones buyers arrive with, usually after a search result or a survey note. They are also the questions where published criteria are thinnest, which means the count of refusals is small and the count of lenders saying nothing is large.
Of the 19 residential lenders whose published criteria Manor Mortgages Direct tracks, 8 publish a position on properties affected by mining and 11 have no published position, checked September 2026.
Of those 8, six will consider and two publish a refusal. Properties built on or close to landfill show the same shape: 6 will consider, 2 publish a refusal and 11 of the 19 say nothing. Contamination is thinner again, at 4 who will consider, 4 refusals and 11 silent, so the published field is only 8 lenders wide and the honest reading is that most criteria simply do not address it.
Flood is asked of a smaller group of 16 lenders rather than 19. A property in an historical flood zone flooded within the last five years drew 8 who will consider and no published refusals, with 8 giving no published position. The same question asked over five years drew 8 who will consider and no refusals, and where only neighbouring properties flooded, 7 will consider and none refuse, with 9 silent.
No refusals at all is a striking result, but it should be read as thin evidence rather than as reassurance. Fewer than half the lenders tracked address flood history in their published criteria, so anyone assessing flood risk is working from a small published field. The valuer's report and the search result still decide the individual case.
Subsidence is better covered than most environmental questions. Of the 19 asked, 8 will consider and 2 publish a refusal, with 9 giving no published position. Coal mining authority reports show the identical split of 8 to 2 with 9 silent, which suggests these two questions are handled by the same part of a criteria guide.
Overhead power lines drew 5 who will consider and 3 refusals, with 11 of the 19 silent. Solar panels, often lumped in with environmental worries, are not a problem at all in the published criteria: 16 will consider and none publish a refusal, with 3 silent. Properties under the Green Deal government scheme are harder, at 4 who will consider and 5 refusals, with 10 saying nothing.
Title, access and the problems a conveyancer finds late
Title questions arrive last in a transaction and are the least likely to have been priced into the lender choice. They are also the group where a published refusal is most likely to be decisive, because a covenant or an overage clause cannot be surveyed away.
Of the 19 residential lenders whose published criteria Manor Mortgages Direct tracks, 16 will consider a flying freehold and none publish a refusal, checked September 2026.
Overage is the opposite case. Of the 19 asked, 3 will consider and 10 publish a refusal, with 6 giving no published position, which makes it one of the ten most refused questions in the whole study. Restrictive covenants are far softer at 6 who will consider and 5 refusals, with 8 silent.
Access questions are thinly covered. A landlocked property drew 4 who will consider and 3 refusals, with 12 of the 19 giving no published position. Shared access or shared services drew 5 who will consider and 4 refusals, with 10 silent. Non-standard utilities are the thinnest question in the entire bank: 3 will consider, 3 publish a refusal and 13 of the 19 say nothing at all.
Alterations to title are similarly sparse. Splitting a title deed drew 7 who will consider and 2 refusals, with 10 silent. Buying the adjoining property drew 3 who will consider and 4 refusals, with 12 of the 19 giving no published position. A knock-through into the property next door drew 2 who will consider and 6 refusals, with 11 silent, checked September 2026.
Property or investment clubs are the outlier in this group and belong with the use based refusals rather than with title. Of the 19 asked, 2 will consider and 10 publish a refusal, with 7 giving no published position. Sinking funds, by contrast, produce almost no signal at all: 3 will consider, 4 publish a refusal and 12 of the 19 say nothing.
Where the published criteria simply run out
A refusal is information. Silence is not, and this study is careful never to treat the two as the same thing. A lender whose published criteria do not address a question is recorded as having no published position and is excluded from that question's denominator, which is why several counts above are reported against 6, 7 or 8 lenders rather than 19.
Across the 122 property questions Manor Mortgages Direct tracks, 11 of the 19 lenders tracked have no published position on a knock-through to the property next door, checked September 2026.
The pattern in the silence is itself a finding. The questions with the most silence are narrow, technical and rare, and they are concentrated in title, access, ground rent and environmental risk. The questions with the least silence are the ones that appear in ordinary transactions every week, such as new build houses, resale flats and tenure, where every lender tracked publishes a position.
Question | Lenders with no published position, of the 19 asked, checked September 2026 |
Non-standard utilities | 13 |
EWS1 safety certificate providers | 13 |
Properties with a sinking fund | 12 |
Purchase of adjoining property | 12 |
Landlocked property | 12 |
Ground rent rising with property value | 12 |
Escalating ground rent | 12 |
Knock-through to property next door | 11 |
Freehold houses with self contained flats | 11 |
Property affected by contamination | 11 |
The practical effect is that thin questions are decided by conversation and by the valuer rather than by a published rule. That is not the same as being refused, and it is not the same as being accepted. It means the published criteria give a broker fewer lenders to rule in or out on paper, and more that have to be checked case by case through a specialist route.
Geography behaves as its own question and is worth separating from property condition. Lending in England drew 18 of 19 who will consider with 1 answering by rule. Lending in Scotland drew 14 of the 21 lenders tracked who will consider and 5 who publish a refusal. Lending in Northern Ireland drew 7 who will consider and 12 who publish a refusal, from the same 21, which is a larger loss of lenders than any single construction type in the study.
Method, limitations and what the study does not say
The tracker is Manor Mortgages Direct's own criteria record: a standard broker question bank of 618 questions applied to residential first charge lenders, of which 122 questions concern the property itself and its construction, tenure, title and setting. This study covers those 122 questions only. Figures were captured on 1 and 2 September 2026 and are reported as checked September 2026.
Twenty-one residential lenders are tracked, and the number asked varies by question. Most property questions were tracked of 19 lenders, the three historical flood questions of 16, the loft conversion and non-standard property type questions of 15, the storeys without a lift question of 17, and the two geography questions of all 21. Every count in this study is reported with the number of lenders actually asked, and no count is scaled up to 21.
"Will consider" means the lender's published criteria do not exclude the property type. It is not an offer, not a decision in principle and not a promise of any kind, and every application is assessed individually. On a property study in particular, the valuer's report decides the case in front of it, and a lender that will consider a property type in principle may still decline a specific property on the valuation.
Silence is recorded as silence. Where a lender's published criteria do not address a question, that lender is recorded as having no published position and is excluded from that question's denominator. Silence is never counted as a refusal, and where the published field is thin the sentence says so rather than reporting a percentage that overclaims.
The specific limitations of this data matter. The 11 high street brands were read page by page, so for those lenders "no published position" means the page does not address the question, not that no position exists internally. The 10 specialists and building societies were read from full criteria guides, which are more comprehensive, so silence in that group is a stronger signal than silence in the high street group. Counts describe only the lenders tracked, not the whole market, and lenders are anonymised throughout.
Two further limitations are worth stating plainly. Some questions are answered by a figure or a rule rather than by a yes or a no, and those responses are counted separately and never folded into either column: tenure is answered by rule by all 19 lenders tracked, and minimum property condition by 15 of 19. And criteria change, sometimes weekly, so any figure here should be read as a snapshot of published positions in early September 2026 rather than a permanent state.
Finding | Count and denominator, checked September 2026 |
Live and work units, published refusal | 15 of the 19 lenders tracked |
Agricultural ties, published refusal | 13 of the 19 lenders tracked |
Service charge treatment, published refusal | 13 of the 19 lenders tracked |
Freehold flats, published refusal | 10 of the 19 lenders tracked |
BISF properties, published refusal | 9 of the 19 lenders tracked |
Spray foam to underside of roof, published refusal | 7 of the 19 lenders tracked |
Japanese knotweed, will consider | 13 of the 19 lenders tracked |
Flying freehold, will consider | 16 of the 19 lenders tracked |
Timber framed construction, will consider | 14 of the 19 lenders tracked |
Grade 2 listed buildings, will consider | 8 of the 19 lenders tracked |
Flood within the last five years, will consider | 8 of the 16 lenders tracked |
Knock-through to property next door, no published position | 11 of the 19 lenders tracked |
Lending in Northern Ireland, published refusal | 12 of the 21 lenders tracked |
Reading your own property off these numbers
The first question to ask about a property is not what it is made of but how it is used and how it is held. A house of ordinary construction with an agricultural tie loses more lenders than a timber framed house with a flat roof and a solar array, because 13 of the 19 lenders tracked publish a refusal on the tie while 14 will consider timber frame and 16 will consider solar panels.
The second question is whether the issue is refused or simply unaddressed. If your property raises a question where 11 or 12 of the 19 lenders tracked have no published position, the shortlist is not narrow so much as unwritten, and the position has to be established lender by lender rather than read off a page.
The third is whether the label you are using is the right one. Flats above commercial premises and flats above food outlets are two different questions with counts of 11 and 4 lenders who will consider, from the 19 asked. Grade 1 and Grade 2 listed are two different questions with counts of 4 and 8. Precision in the description changes the field of lenders more than almost anything else in this dataset.
The fourth is timing. Title and access questions carry the highest silence counts in the study and surface latest in a transaction, which is the worst possible combination. Overage, landlocked access, shared services and adjoining purchases are all better raised before a lender is chosen than after a valuation is instructed.
None of this replaces a valuation. Every count in the study describes what a lender publishes, and a published willingness to consider a property type is only the entry point to an individual assessment of an individual property.
To cite this study: Manor Mortgages Direct, "The Property Problems Study: Which Property Issues Lose You the Most Lenders", September 2026, manormortgagesdirect.com/property-problems-study. Figures may be quoted with that attribution; lenders are anonymised and counts describe the lenders tracked.
FAQs
Which property issue loses the most lenders?
Live and work units. Of the 19 residential lenders tracked, 15 publish a refusal and 2 will consider, checked September 2026. It is the highest refusal count of any of the 122 property questions in the study.
Is Japanese knotweed as damaging as its reputation suggests?
Not on the published criteria. Of the 19 lenders tracked, 13 will consider a property affected by Japanese knotweed and 2 publish a refusal, with 4 giving no published position. A management plan and the valuer's report still decide the individual case.
How do lenders treat freehold flats?
Freehold flats are the most refused question in the flats group. Of the 19 lenders tracked, 10 publish a refusal and 8 will consider, with only 1 giving no published position, checked September 2026.
Does non-standard construction rule out most lenders?
No, though the specific type matters far more than the label. Asked as a general question, 11 of the 19 lenders will consider non-standard construction and 2 publish a refusal. Asked about BISF specifically, only 3 will consider and 9 publish a refusal.
What does a listed building do to the lender count?
It depends on the grade. Grade 2 listed drew 8 lenders who will consider and 1 refusal from the 19 asked, while Grade 1 drew 4 who will consider and 5 refusals. In both cases 10 of the 19 have no published position.
What does "no published position" mean in this study?
It means the lender's published criteria do not address that question, so the lender is excluded from that question's denominator rather than counted as a refusal. On some questions this dominates: 13 of the 19 lenders tracked have no published position on non-standard utilities, checked September 2026.
Summary
Across 122 property and construction criteria questions, use and tenure lose more lenders than structure. Live and work units, agricultural ties, service charge treatment, farms and freehold flats drew the highest refusal counts, while knotweed, flying freehold, timber frame and solar panels were widely considered. Many title, access and environmental questions produced no published position at all, leaving thin evidence rather than refusal. Counts describe the lenders tracked in September 2026.
Reviewed by Ben Stephenson, FCA-authorised mortgage adviser, CeMAP-qualified.
Manor Mortgages Direct is FCA authorised, FRN 496907, has traded for 25 years, is highly positively reviewed, 4.9 rated on Google, and has helped thousands secure the right mortgage. Bristol-based mortgage brokers, assisting clients nationwide.
Sources
Manor Mortgages Direct (2026), criteria tracker, 122 property and construction questions across 21 residential first charge lenders, checked September 2026 - https://www.manormortgagesdirect.com/property-problems-study - accessed 9 September 2026
GOV.UK (2026), Check the long term flood risk for an area in England - https://www.gov.uk/check-long-term-flood-risk - accessed 9 September 2026
Historic England (2026), The National Heritage List for England - https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/ - accessed 9 September 2026
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