Are you a Foreign National in the UK and want to buy your first home here? Are you thinking, how can this be possible?
Well, there are almost 190,000 properties in England and Wales owned by foreign nationals and I am pleased to say I have secured mortgages for 2 of them in the last 6 months. (These numbers were from a recent FOI submitted by Benham and Reeves to the Land Registry to establish the number of properties owned by foreign nationals with an overseas address) Have you any idea who the most active buyers in the UK market? It remains Hong Kongers, in London alone, they have almost 25,000 properties, followed by Singapore and then the United States.
A recent press release from Suffolk Building Society announced they were relaxing their criteria for foreign nationals, expats and downsizers. on Monday of this week they came in line with other High Street lenders like Barclays and reduced their criteria from living in the UK and working here for 2 years down to a year.
We secured a mortgage only recently for a couple from India, but on a skilled working visa and they had lived in the UK for 8 years. Barclays offered them a residential mortgage and they put down a 10% deposit.
Not all foreign nationals will still have an overseas address, another client recently came to the UK on a spousal visa, her country of origin was Russia and she moved to Scotland to join her fiancée and she had lived and worked in the UK for almost a year when we secured her and her Scottish partner a mortgage on an idyllic property in Scotland. They had been saving hard and had a great deposit, and we found a lender, Accord, who is part of the Yorkshire Building Society
This couple gave us a fabulous review on Google: “Great advice and a lot of support through the process. Toby and Claire were extremely helpful and got us an amazing deal. Highly recommended!”
If you are looking to buy your first UK home, get in touch with one of the team and we can talk you through the process.
