Mortgage Advice Bureau (MAB) has hosted a Green Mortgage Event with mortgage intermediaries, lenders, and investors in attendance to discuss the many challenges the property and mortgage sector is facing against the backdrop of the ‘green agenda’, and what the industry can do in order to help reach the goals set out.

Currently circa 53% of housing stock in the UK is an EPC rating of D or below, making them ineligible for many of the green mortgage products on offer. Recent research from Mortgage Advice Bureau also found that two fifths (41%) of UK adults don’t know what their property’s EPC rating is, highlighting a wider issue that perhaps many don’t fully understand how much carbon their homes are emitting.

Ben Thompson, Deputy CEO of Mortgage Advice Bureau, described the opportunity for lenders and brokers to collectively educate and generate the right type of mortgages for consumers to make energy efficient improvements to their homes.

He said: “The median energy efficiency score of properties across the UK is similar, but worryingly the averages all sit below a C rating. This is a nationwide problem, and therefore a national UK opportunity. Lenders and intermediaries have a magnitude of a task ahead in order to raise awareness, educate, and help households and businesses make their buildings healthier, more comfortable, and more valuable, particularly when we think about the scale of the 2050 commitment.

“We have a responsibility as lenders and intermediaries to also hold the line on various dates pertaining to the property market and EPC rating, and we must not allow them to be pushed back.”

As a guest speaker at the event, Jessica Sansom, sustainability director of Huel, raised the importance of education. She said: “If you don’t help people to use a product properly, it actually won’t make a difference.”

She noted market forces are imperative in the housing industry to really instigate change, but that lenders need to ensure their products deliver on the front side as well as the back side. This includes informing consumers not only what a green mortgage product will do, but how their money attached to a mortgage is invested.