A couple who struggled to get a mortgage from big banks due to their age have spoken of their battle to buy a home.
A huge barrier for older people trying to buy a home is that many mortgage lenders have age caps.
These put a hard limit on the time the mortgage ends and has to be paid off.
A small number of lenders, mostly small regional building societies, have no age cap, according to mortgage broker software Criteria Brain.
However, most lenders have a limit ranging from 55 to 85 years old.
This means older borrowers face restricted options, and many are unable to get mortgages due to their age.
If that was not bad enough, many mortgage lenders also do not accept pension cash for paying off mortgages - further battering older borrowers.
One couple who struggled with this system are Gary and Elizabeth Das, 71 and 62.
The pair had a dream of moving from London and buying a house by the sea in Cornwall.
Gary is a retired consultant surgeon and Elizabeth is a former NHS nursing practitioner.
Gary said: "I wanted to live in Devon or Cornwall, as having seen it, I was just desperate to go back.
"At first I thought getting a mortgage should be straightforward because I'd never had a problem before, but this time I found people were talking a different sort of language to me because I’m not 35, or even 55, anymore.”
He found lenders were either saying no outright, charging huge interest rates or limiting how much they would lend.
“The arrangement fees and interest rates were high and the amount they wanted to lend was miserly,” he said.
“We couldn’t even have afforded the garage of the place we were trying to buy.”
But things started to come together when they spoke to a specialist lender, Livemore, who did not judge them just based on their age.
Elizabeth said: "If you pass the age of 50 in this country, it can feel like you’re useless or you're just stuck in a home and discarded.
“Other lenders would look at our pensions and say, ‘there's nothing we can do’. We were absolutely snookered and the whole thing felt very negative. Fortunately, LiveMore was the other side of the equation."
Gary said: "I felt elated, euphoric when I realised it was possible.”
The duo realised they could even rent out their current flat and still get the house they wanted in Cornwall.
Now they have made their move to the West Country and say they are not looking back.
Gary said: "We’ve always loved travelling but it's lovely here, especially summer in Cornwall.
“As I look to the left there are rolling fields and Canadian geese flying past. It’s wonderful. Really, we just haven't had the urge to go anywhere since we moved to be honest.”
