"They have agreed to increase the loan size to £980,000, have allowed him three months to carry out the structural changes and have also sent him a hamper by way of saying sorry."
Martese Carton, head of intermediary distribution at Leeds Building Society, said: "Where possible, we will always work with customers seeking to port their existing mortgage to a new property.
"As is standard practice for a mortgage application of this type, we instructed an independent valuer who, after carrying out a full assessment, advised the property was not suitable security in its current state. Working with the customer, the valuer has agreed a small number of physical modifications, which would make the property suitable for use as security.
"The borrower probably would have received exactly the same response from any lender. The valuer who works for us also works for other lenders and their advice would have been the same in this situation."
It added: "Regrettably, the proposed conveyancer was not on our panel. While the panel is published on our website, we appreciate that this case has a number of challenging characteristics. For this reason, we have waived the panel membership application fee."
imogen.tew@ft.com
