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Are delays with Housing Associations and Management Companies costing borrowers thousands?

ended 19. September 2025

Getting information from Housing Associations and Management Companies for leasehold companies can sometimes take months. This is meaning that borrowers who want to remortgage to a better rate are either sitting on the Standard Variable Rate or having to Product Transfer with the existing lender, potentially costing thousands over the term of the mortgage.

 Should Housing Associations or Management Companies be liable for the costs or should they be forced to commit to timescales to return information?

 Are lenders asking for too much from them? One broker recently had a lender asking for a cover letter from the person who undertook the EWS1 form (which said the building was fine) in 2020. Is this unreasonable? Should lenders be asking for less information or are they being over the top?

4 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Adam Stiles
Managing Director at Helix Financial Partners
It is painful for all involved, especially the borrower, when the Housing Association or Management Company take a huge amount of time in replying each time information is requested. It's simply not fair. Often the borrower is paying a lot of money for a service charge but with next to no service in return. It often compounds the expense - delays cost the borrower real money.

Lenders can often be over zealous in what they're asking for and that in itself amplifies the problem. Asking the same person who wrote a report 5 years ago to provide information is completely impractical if that person is retired or no longer working at the same company. Common sense needs to prevail.
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Michelle Lawson
Director at Lawson Financial
We are in a Laurel and Hardy phase- what a fine mess! This is all just part of the ridiculous cycle we are now in. We have Risk, Compliance and Sales departments at lenders all at odds and ends with each other. Companies have stripped back their workforce for cost-cutting due to the onerous costs and legislation imposed by our government. On top of this the working from home culture does affect productivity too and many staff go unmonitored or lack progression prospects. As a result, operations are grinding to a halt for the minutest tasks due to diluted processes while everyone else suffers that are amongst it all. God help us all!
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Editor
Laura Purkess
Personal Finance Expert at Investing Insiders
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Kundan Bhaduri
Entrepreneur, Investor and Landlord at The Kushman Group
Housing associations and management companies operate like medieval guilds, extracting service charges while delivering service at the speed of naught. These organisations have zero commercial incentive to respond quickly because they face no consequences for incompetence, creating a captive market where efficiency goes to die.

The lender over-engineering is equally absurd though. Demanding cover letters from surveyors who completed EWS1 forms five years ago is risk management divorced from reality. These professionals have moved jobs, retired, or simply cannot recall specific assessments from hundreds of similar reports. Meanwhile, borrowers sit on expensive SVRs while bureaucrats debate whether a fire safety certificate from 2020 needs additional authentication from someone who might now be running a garden centre for all you know.