Buying a house in UK when living abroad

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Hi everyone

I moved abroad so I could actually save up money to buy a house in the UK. I'm finally in a good position to do that, but now I realise I have no idea how to get a mortgage in the UK if I am a resident in the EU. I know the mortgage rates aren't ideal at the moment but I do have a good size deposit and salary, so I think it would be ok financially until I'm ready to move back.

Have any of you got any experience or ideas you can share?

If you are an overseas taxpayer / are paid in foreign income you get a smaller mortgage offer - something like 60% of what you would get if you are paid a UK salary. You can apply for a mortgage via your resident country but you usually have to use your own property in your resident country as a guarantee.

https://www.nrla.org.uk/services/mortgages I use them. They are very good. If you are not part of NRLA, they charge a slightly higher fee but a few hundred is nothing compared to other brokers targeting expat, charging you 3% loan value as fees.

Ah thank you both very much, this is really useful!

Factor in that you will have to pay more on stamp duty tax as a non UK resident, good luck in finding the right property.

I did this when I moved back to the uk after living in a European country for a few years

The first thing which I did was register my uk bank account, credit card etc at a uk address. I found that after about 3 months your uk credit score catches up and then you can apply for stuff much more easily.

i just went with my own uk bank for a mortgage. I expect that I could have got a better rate elsewhere but the benefit of a bank I had a history with and could apply to online outweighed that for me.

I also found that solicitors can act completely remotely as long as they have seen you initially for proof of ID. So, when I was in the uk (before even having an offer accepted) I went into the solicitors who I would use and did proof of id etc. that saved a fortune in travel costs!

Feel free to pm me if you have questions - good luck!

We’ve just done this, although for various reasons some of the tax stuff is different for us. We found a specialist broker to be a good thing. Depending where you live and how many days you are in the UK, you might still be counted as a UK tax resident which may change the picture on the extra tax you need to pay.

https://www.numberonemortgages.co.uk/

Here’s who we used. They were really good.

This may be a bit late for you, but may help others.

I definitely recommend finding a good broker. Personally, I have found pms-uk.org to be very good for this.

They sorted me out with a mortgage while living and working in Japan (plus while in a non-standard employment category) and they have also helped a friend who was contracting in Denmark and didn't have the normal three year track record of accounts.

Possibly not the very cheapest, but do a good job with non-standard situations.

We had to get a foreign currency mortgage, bought a house in London about 2 years ago mortgage with Newbury building society, at the time it was slightly higher interest rate, (when rates were really low) it’s a discounted rate, so it’s gone up quite a lot but is lower than current SVR, we were living in Canada, then NYC, we have just returned to UK so will now be looking to change it if we can get a better deal.
You have to pay more stamp duty as a non resident.