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We catch up with Rachel Pyne, operations director at BuildStore, about how specialist mortgages can benefit self-builders
Rachel Pyne
Advance stage payment mortgages come into their own on projects where a large deposit is required, like on this timber frame build by Taylor Lane
Why is there a need for specialist self-build mortgages?
Self-build is a bit of a niche market and there’s only a handful of UK firms that lend on this kind of project. Understanding the ins-and-outs of the sector requires expert knowledge, hence the need for tailored financial offerings. If you go back to what I call ‘life before BuildStore’, everyone in self-build finance was basically doing the same thing – they’d lend on the land and the build, but only release funds after construction. We recognised the need for an alternative, as what was available didn’t work for most people. Because payments came to you after that stage of the development was done, you’d need to fund that phase of the project yourself. This meant lots of people were having cashflow difficulties, so we came up with the advance stage payment product (also known as the accelerator) as a response to this.