Would I get a mortgage straightaway

[Yawnyyawnyyawnsville]

I’m British, but living overseas
If I came back to the U.K. with say a £150,000 deposit for a house, would I get it straightaway?
Also, what would be the average monthly payment on the other £150 grand id like to lend? (Around a 300 k house) are houses this much nowadays?

@SloppyJays Thats great, thank you, I will have a play around with the amounts, I had an idea it would be smaller amount to pay for some reason

How much were you thinking?

Remember that you’ll have council tax, insurance, maintenance costs etc. on top of the mortgage.

Cornwall has quite high housing costs relative to the average income, driven by the demand for holiday and second homes.

I'd contact a broker when you are back here personally. They will be able to advise you and find you the right lender (I would imagine you will be limited for a while until you build up a credit history and establish a career -i needed 5 months pay slips for a start).
The repayments for 150k will vary on the lender and what they offer. A sizeable deposit will help.

When we got our mortgage last year, lenders were asking for six months' payslips and bank statements.

Interest rates have gone up hugely in the past year. All mortgage borrowing is much more expensive now. Cornwall can be REALLY pricy, depending on where you want to live, and many of the more affordable bits of the county are rough as anything. Does it have to be Cornwall ?

Thanks everyone, yes it would have to be Cornwall, that or stay where we are.
Any idea when (if) rates are going to go down?

If I knew with any certainty when interest rates would start to fall, I assure you I'd be earning a LOT more than I do now!

There are some nice houses around Penzance in your budget, and you'd be paying about 950/month on the mortgage. Have you got UK jobs to come back to?

They look likely to stay around here for the next year before slowly dropping a bit.

@PonyPatter44 Is Penzance a nice area? Family are in Perranporth but literally nothing affordable around there

You could ring London and Country and ask them if you could qualify for a mortgage. They are well known mortgage brokers but you can ask about mortgage eligibility in your circumstances without obligation to apply for or accept a mortgage through them. They also have a website with calculators and so on.

You were asking about upper age limits. It used to be a fairly standard thing that it had to be paid off by 75. I took out a mortgage with an upper limit of 80 which was fairly unusual at the time. But there was an article in the Sunday Times on 27 August which said 48 lenders would give a mortgage stretching up to a borrower's 80th birthday or beyond and some had no limit at all. Not only that but 26 lenders would accept borrowers aged 80 or more at the start of the mortgage so long as they could show they were able to pay it back. Things have certainly changed a lot in that regard because of the increase in house prices.

Permanent jobs most lenders would want six months. Freelance or contract 2-3 years. With a deposit like yours though there's no harm in asking. I'd advise getting a mortgage advisor

OP, you seem to be jumping about five steps ahead of yourself here. You aren’t in the country, don’t have a job here, don’t know the area you are planning to move back to at all, and have no idea if houses in that area are actually within your budget or not.

Step 1 move back to the UK, probably stay in an Airbnb or with family as you won’t be eligible to rent with no income or references
Step 2 find a job
Step 3 find a rental, as you won’t get a mortgage that quickly
Step 4 look around the local area and decide if you like Penzance or not, and how big a mortgage you can afford
Step 5 start putting offers in to buy

You would need atleast 3 months bank statements and they would need to show income going in. Would also need to be a UK bank. A mortgage broker will be your best bet.

Posted too early - but yes a broker would have better access to specialist lenders that lend to people in your situation and will save you from ruining your credit history by highstreet lenders declining you very quickly.

It is hard to predict interest rates, but I personally think these rates are going to be around for a while if you follow historic rates on the Bank of England the Last 15 years have been an blip somewhere 3.5 to 6.5% is more the norm for the 150 years the Bank of England has kept records.

If you've been out of the country for a while you'll have no credit rating either unless you kept something going here. When I moved back after a few years in the Middle East I couldn't even get a car loan.

So, rent for a bit, take utilities out on direct debit, get the job going etc
When I moved back I opened up accounts with a specific building society that did good mortgages. Went with them.

Yeah I think it’s going to be a lot harder than you think it is. Having a big deposit isn’t really a selling point for you to banks when they are so heavily regulated on how they lend.

Rates are very high at the moment - they are going down and trends predict they’ll be back to around the 3% mark on 2025 but we’ll not see the 1.5/2% rates from before covid for at least another 5 years, if ever.

You usually need 3 months bank statements showing stable income - some of the top of the market lenders (like Halifax and Santander) may ask for 6.

Your best bet is to speak to a lender - your lack of credit history in the UK (unless you have kept a bank account/credit card) whilst you’ve been away will also mean a higher rate as well. Don’t be surprised if even on only a £150k mortgage you’re quoted £900/£1k a month.

Renting might be difficult without a credit history, too. And Cornwall has a housing crisis, so renting will also be a) expensive and b) competitive.

The definitions of “lend” and “borrow” are quite clear and do not change no matter what region you are from.

To your question, we secured a mortgage in the UK after living abroad for two years. We actually managed to complete the sale before we moved back. We had a large deposit, I had been with the bank for a long time, my husband was transferring from an overseas branch to a UK branch of the same organisation.

Getting unsecured credit was another matter though. We once tried to get new furniture on credit and that was an immediate decline as we had been out of the country.

@Figmentof 2 years I think is ok as you still had credit history in the UK as you mentioned you still had a bank account.

Normally if you’ve been out of the UK more than 6 years (how long our credit cycle is) it’s much harder.

House prices in the UK are bonkers right now.

Cornwall even more so.

Cornwall is also an expensive place to live - 'tourist tax', travel (miles from nearest big cities, public transport can be awful)

You will have zero credit or work history - when I was in mortgages you needed to have a decent credit history, and have been in your current job 6m with a permanent contract.

I think you need a good chat with your family in Cornwall about places to live, then a Google on Rightmove to get an idea of mortgage costs.

Thanks everyone, it seems more of a stressful task than I envisioned..oh to have lots of money, life would be so much easier

In some languages the word for 'lend' and 'borrow' is the same. I think perhaps this is what OP meant.