Commercial Property

What is a Primary, Secondary or

Tertiary Property?

If you would like to talk to a chartered surveyor about a structural survey or a building survey on the property or any disputes that you may have with the builders, party wall issues, boundary disputes, etc, then please do not hesitate to contact us on 0800 298 5424 for a friendly chat.

Primary, secondary and tertiary markets

These terms are often used in the property market to relate to the poor quality of a property's location. For example, a shop in the high street would have a primary location, a shop within walking distances of the high street would have a secondary location and one on the outskirts, but not in out of town shopping area would have a tertiary location. An out of town shopping location, providing that it was “alive”, would be in the primary market. This is also a good term to use for how mortgage companies look at you and me as a prospect (a prospect is a future buyer of their services).

A primary candidate would be able to use a primary company, such as one that is seen on the high street in a primary location, for example we mentioned the Halifax already and also someone like the Bradford & Bingley, as these companies would usually have a strong national presence, or a strong local presence.

Secondary and tertiary lending are those prospects that are less well off, perhaps with an income that cannot be proved, or have had previous difficulties with money, perhaps resulting in a CCJ (Count Court Judgment). These would tend to fall into the tertiary lenders, many of which you won't have heard of unless you are actually in the mortgage market. It normally takes a mortgage broker to find them, or many hours on the internet. Tertiary lending is high risk and as such the tertiary companies want higher rewards. Ironically, many times these tertiary companies are subsidiaries of the primary companies and if they don't have a tertiary company they will certainly have a secondary company.

A secondary prospect is likely to be someone who is self-employed with accounts, possibly has a damaged credit record. Whilst we are talking about credit records it is worth spending your money on a credit check from www.experian.co.uk which is the credit referencing agency that most mortgage companies use. With this information you will be able to repair any credit problems that you have and correct any mistakes. So, as a secondary prospect you would deal with companies such as Independent Finance, which interestingly are a subsidiary of the Halifax, who are a subsidiary of HBOS plc. Due to the fact that they have a name and brand that needs protecting they will tend to take business from the better end of the secondary market.

Other companies that operate in this arena are such companies as the Bristol & West and the Norwich & Peterborough Building Society, who are trying to move from the local market to a more regional base. Then we have the mortgage companies that deal with the tertiary market that have been set up and aimed fairly and squarely at this market, in a very similar way that some mortgage companies have been set up to be aimed at the buy to let market and some companies deal with the commercial property market.

For more information on commercial surveys see:

Commercial Surveys

Compare our Commercial Surveys

Information on Dilapidations

If you would like to talk to a chartered surveyor about a structural survey or a building survey on the property or any disputes that you may have with the builders, party wall issues, boundary disputes, etc, then please do not hesitate to contact us on 0800 298 5424 for a friendly chat.

Please note we are independent chartered surveyors.

We hope you found the article of use and if you have any experiences that you feel should be added to this article that would benefit others, or you feel that some of the information that we have put is wrong then please do not hesitate to contact us (we are only human).

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