British entrepreneurs should consider buying property now.

We are not taking a view on prices, but most of us may not have the opportunity to acquire real estate for much longer.

The British government wants to ban “self certification” mortgages. While most mortgages demand proof of income, self certification mortgages, as the name suggests, allow the borrower to certify his own income.

Most entrepreneurs would be unable to buy a home any other way: only a minority have already made a large pile of surplus cash that enables them to buy outright without a loan, and, of the rest, most would have difficulty proving that they have a regular income, even when they are doing well.

Despite this, a sweeping ban is proposed in the name of “clamping down on irresponsible lending”.

This is an irrational response to the lending crisis. There is no evidence that self certification mortgages constitute irresponsible lending. On the contrary, the credit crisis was triggered by obviously irresponsible lending to people who were able to show a definite regular income – but an income so low and so precarious that default was all too foreseeable.

Abolishing self certification mortgages is another case of discrimination against the self-employed. Its economic effect will be to discourage enterprise at the time when enterprise is needed most.

Like everyone else, entrepreneurs need a place to live. Their property holdings are also usually crucial to their business plans. Many have little choice but to put their homes up as collateral for business loans.

Again, the UK mortgage system discriminates against entrepreneurs. Mortgages – usually the cheapest form of borrowing – are only permitted when the buyer can satisfy ‘affordability’ criteria. Of course, those starting a business tend to have little if any income and thus cannot ‘afford’ a mortgage.

Instead they take out more expensive bank loans, for which they are permitted to use their property as collateral. Somehow, with wonderful bureaucratic logic, the more expensive mortgage is also deemed the more affordable.

Others have found the self certification route a convenient, if not entirely legitimate, way of circumventing this particular piece of counterproductive bureaucracy by taking out mortgages to finance their business ventures.

Property ownership is important to most people, and doubly important to most entrepreneurs. Obstacles to business owners buying property – or borrowing against property already owned – are therefore also obstacles to people starting and running their own businesses.

We don’t often raise a call to action on this blog, but if you share our view that grown up people should be allowed to make grown up decisions and feel it is imperative that start-ups are able to benefit from the cheapest sources of finance available then we invite you to let Britain’s Financial Services Authority know by making a submission to its Mortgage Market Review.

We see no reason why people should not be able to borrow up to two-thirds of the value of their property for whatever reason – without questions and without having to prove affordability. If we fail to meet the repayments we lose our homes. Just so long as we know that when we take out the mortgage, let us decide for ourselves.