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Borrowing in the UK for a home


jen85

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Can any Brits help me out with this one, I am trying to find out if other than the obvious income etc are there any minimum requirements for borrowing? i.e. do you have to be in your job for a certain period of time (In Aus its 6 months) or do you need to have been in the country for a period of time too..

 

Any help with this would be much appreciated, with the dollar dropping against the pound I may have to borrow some extra on top of the cash.

 

Thanks!

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Individual lenders will have their own rules but having a sizeable deposit (sounds like you do) will make things far simpler.

 

Lender really wants to know that if they have to force a sale that they are covered adequately e.g. if you buy a 500k home and only want to borrow 100k then negative equity would have to take your house value below 100k before they would lose out if they called in the loan

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Individual lenders will have their own rules but having a sizeable deposit (sounds like you do) will make things far simpler.

 

Lender really wants to know that if they have to force a sale that they are covered adequately e.g. if you buy a 500k home and only want to borrow 100k then negative equity would have to take your house value below 100k before they would lose out if they called in the loan

 

Thanks much appreciated! Helps me understand how they rate things there..can anyone else provide any insight :)

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We went back to the UK at around Easter and met with our bank mortgage advisor. Many banks have stopped doing expat mortgages meaning you can't set a mortgage up from Australia or use Australian job/income records as proof of earnings. They said (lloyds tsb by the way) that once we arrive back in the UK they would need about 6 months income records to lend to us again on a new mortgage.

 

However, we recently inherited half a house and wanted to buy the other half, which we needed about 30k for. Despite this being very low risk to the bank they still wouldn't lend the 30k. In the end we've managed to scrape enough together to buy without a mortgage. But, we did to some investigation and there are some banks that will do expat mortgages. Barclays was one but we couldn't use them as they wanted a minimum lend of 100k with a deposit of at least 50k (all in GBP by the way I don't have a pound sign on this keyboard!).

 

So it is possible to get a mortgage off the back of your Australian earnings, but you will pay higher interest rates compared to standard uk mortgages. I'm also not sure how soon you could switch the mortgage product to a normal mortgage and therefore reduce your interest rate (but probably in the region of 22-24 months like most mortgages).

 

It really depends how much you want to move into your own home straight away, or if you'd be happy renting for 6 months while you decide exactly where you want to live and have time to check out the property market fully in that area.

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Sorry I didn't explain this better, I'm looking to borrow just maybe 50k (GBP) when I get there, we already have the rest of the money for a house in cash. I don't want to setup a mortgage before I go I just wanted to know if they have restrictions with say, you have to show 6 months UK income or you have to have UK credit history (which I don't). I have had a home in Aus and wondering if I can take a credit report if that will help.

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you need at least 25% deposit and the fees and broker fees are quite a bit. It helps if you say you will live in it and are returning. Rate and savings wise, it may be better to wait 6 months to prove work history in the UK as you will get a better deal.

lots of smaller lenders are getting into expat morgages and are starting to fill the gap

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Sorry I didn't explain this better, I'm looking to borrow just maybe 50k (GBP) when I get there, we already have the rest of the money for a house in cash. I don't want to setup a mortgage before I go I just wanted to know if they have restrictions with say, you have to show 6 months UK income or you have to have UK credit history (which I don't). I have had a home in Aus and wondering if I can take a credit report if that will help.

 

No a credit report from Aus won't help enough, as you won't be in the same job or earning the same money when you're in the UK (thus the need for 6 months UK payslips etc). The only way you can use your current situation to borrow money int he UK is if you get an expat mortgage.

 

But I would rent anyway initially so you know exactly what kind of house you want.

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