Homeowner denied mortgage following ‘knotweed tangle’
Friday, 28th May 2010
A homeowner seeking to remortgage his £400,000 property has been denied after surveyors discovered deadly Japanese knotweed lurking in his back garden.
Dave Williams was confident Santander would lend him £83,000 but was left wanting after a routine survey uncovered Japanese knotweed, one of Britain’s most invasive and resilient weeds, sprouting at the bottom of his garden, rendering the detached property “unsaleable”.
Brought over to the country decades ago as an ornamental garden plant, knotweed is now a major headache for homeowners and developers due to its resistance against a wide number of pesticides and diseases.
Able to regenerate from miniscule fragments, the bamboo-like plants cost upwards of £100 a square foot to eradicate but Mr Williams claims Santander’s decision is “crazy” and lacks “common sense”.
“If I had a survey done in the winter I would have been OK because it only comes up in the spring and summer,” added Mr Williams. “It is an intensive weed but an element of common sense has got to be applied.”
''If we were infested then fair enough, but all I've got is half a dozen sticks of Knotweed not two foot out of the ground. That's what incensed me.”
Santander is currently one of many lenders refusing mortgages if knotweed is deemed to threaten a property, even if it is growing next door.
But, with experts claiming the weed can be found in almost every square mile of Britain, homeowners planning to sell or remortgage their property should start scanning their gardens and tackle the problem before it spreads.
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