A LOOE couple has spoken of their tooth and nail fight to get on the housing ladder - and their view that there is a ‘systematic bias’ in the system against local people with multiple jobs or self employed.

They explain how they were helped by their broker in Wales, who herself had been “priced out of the market” in her own home town.

The organisation Kernow Matters to Us has been campaigning on the housing crisis facing people in Cornwall, in both the private rental and housing to buy sectors.

They’ve sent a letter this week to all of Cornwalls MPs and every Cornwall Councillor to highlight the way local people are being “priced out of their communities”.

In response to their request for examples and stories, they say they’ve had hundreds of messages in recent weeks, some speak of how they have been “thrown out of their homes to make way for holiday rentals” and others who say the price of the house they had hoped to buy has suddenly shot through the roof due to the demand.

This anonymous account came from a couple in Looe.

"Our tale of home ownership, although successful in the end I think personifies how awful the situation is in our coastal communities.

Me and my partner are Cornish, 25 years old, and have just managed to beat the odds and get our first, albeit tiny house in Looe in April.

My family has lived in Looe for over 600 years according to our church records and my partner has made the huge move (haha) from St Stephens and is also Cornish as far as records go back. After successfully beating the odds to both be the first in our families to achieve degrees and masters degrees - and then both working several seasonal jobs and starting and running our own successful businesses all simultaneously, we still struggled immensely to get a mortgage despite living at home with parents and significant savings. Banks look down upon the self-employed and people with multiple jobs (which of course characterises most young people who’ve chosen to remain in Cornwall).

Both wanting to remain with our families and amongst the community amidst which we are a part (unlike Westminster feels - we’re not just items which can be moved around and move to the north of england for cheaper rents without family and friends, the life we derive value from and the people we love - whilst we conveniently move out of the way of English people buying our communities).

In the end pre-covid I received an inheritance which was added to by my entire families effort and kindness to help me stay here, and dwarfed the mortgage I was asking for, so there was no risk to the bank whatsoever. So by kindness and calculation (we overcame) the mortgage algorhythm’s hatred of multiple jobs/seasonal incomes and self-employment.

Then as the covid boom hit the housing market I watched as I tried to place offers, the houses rise in value faster than all my earnings - jumping £5000 a month on a two bedroom house to cash buyers.

Luckily again a tiny holiday home came up that was near derelict but structurally sound (which is not what remote speculators target in Cornwall so remained "affordable" at £240,000 for what amounted to three small rooms stacked on top of each other with no parking, no garden, no working electrics).

We were over the moon - we could make do and actually maybe live somewhere! Oh well if it was extension leads and needed some planks put down it was somewhere we could stay in Cornwall.

We put our offer in and were told it would be only a few weeks!

However we only managed to keep it despite a litany of challenges and thanks to the kindness of cornish and welsh strangers:

- Our solictor prioritised higher value houses sold as second homes as they were above the voided stamp tax threshold

- this delayed the approval from the bank, which turned out wanted a third flood survey

- Five months of professionals failing to do their jobs meant the house went up to £260,000 - a £20k rise we couldn’t hope to earn let alone save in that time.

- After explaining to the Welsh mortgage broker who understood after being driven out of her own community in the same way spent several days and nights fighting to get the survey done in time to complete before the sellers (who kindly waited four extra months, lowered the price as we planned to live there not rent it out for holidays, and refused gazumping offers from cash buyers).

In the end we now live here - but little did we realise how difficult it is to buy a house here without literally paying in cash as banks and societies hate lending to young people who work as the Cornish economy dictates. It’s not a matter of not working hard, or even not having the money/savings, it’s a systemic bias against those who earn money in the Cornish economy - preventing people buying the homes of their ancestors.

Now we live in the town of Looe - at huge expense and by the kindness of our family and Cornish strangers - yet we are the only people living on our entire street. The rest are rental holiday homes. And now we know why we’re alone.

All the best,

A angry local of Looe who shouts at people knocking on my door asking to rent the cottage for a week."