Joint Mortgage

[csimmons9]

Hi all,

Myself (UK Citizen) and my wife (US Citizen on first spousal visa) would like to buy a house.

What experience have people had with getting a joint mortgage between a married couple with one non-UK Citizen?

We both hold permanent job positions.

[seagul]

Hi all,

Myself (UK Citizen) and my wife (US Citizen on first spousal visa) would like to buy a house.

What experience have people had with getting a joint mortgage between a married couple with one non-UK Citizen?

We both hold permanent job positions.

Millions of married/unmarried couples are happily living in their joint mortgaged property as long as they can afford it. Jointly mortgaged property can also easily meet the accomodation & cohabitation requirement in relation of visa application.

[csimmons9]

Hi all,

Myself (UK Citizen) and my wife (US Citizen on first spousal visa) would like to buy a house.

What experience have people had with getting a joint mortgage between a married couple with one non-UK Citizen?

We both hold permanent job positions.

Millions of married/unmarried couples are happily living in their joint mortgaged property as long as they can afford it. Jointly mortgaged property can also easily meet the accomodation & cohabitation requirement in relation of visa application.

Thanks, I was actually looking for experiences of anyone who has tried/is trying to get a joint mortgage with a non-UK citizen. I.E., are mortgage lenders open to this living situation, especially for foreign nationals on limited length visas?

[TanJL]

It's not a problem to be on a visa such as spouse or FLR(M) to get a joint mortgage.
My husband & I bought a house in October.
I would suggest using an independent mortgage adviser as they can look at the whole market and see which banks are most likely to offer you a good deal.
We went direct to HSBC and they said we would need at least a 25% deposit if my husband didn't have ILR.
We went through a mortgage adviser and ended up getting a mortgage with Santander with a 15% deposit (we could have done 10% but it decreased the interest rate significantly).
They will say stuff about needing X amount of time left on your visa but our application went through fine despite this & we just explained to our mortgage adviser that it's a settlement route and there's no reason our renewal wouldn't be approved.
We found that the biggest issue was actually my husbands lack of credit score as he'd only been in the UK for 1.5 years and we'd lived with my parents so he hadn't been able to build up much of a credit score. So several lenders wouldn't accept us because our combined credit score was too low.
We did attempt to increase our credit scores before the mortgage application.

[csimmons9]

It's not a problem to be on a visa such as spouse or FLR(M) to get a joint mortgage.
My husband & I bought a house in October.
I would suggest using an independent mortgage adviser as they can look at the whole market and see which banks are most likely to offer you a good deal.
We went direct to HSBC and they said we would need at least a 25% deposit if my husband didn't have ILR.
We went through a mortgage adviser and ended up getting a mortgage with Santander with a 15% deposit (we could have done 10% but it decreased the interest rate significantly).
They will say stuff about needing X amount of time left on your visa but our application went through fine despite this & we just explained to our mortgage adviser that it's a settlement route and there's no reason our renewal wouldn't be approved.
We found that the biggest issue was actually my husbands lack of credit score as he'd only been in the UK for 1.5 years and we'd lived with my parents so he hadn't been able to build up much of a credit score. So several lenders wouldn't accept us because our combined credit score was too low.
We did attempt to increase our credit scores before the mortgage application.

Thank you so much. That is really great info!

Would you recommend that my partner get a credit card to begin to build a good credit score, then?

[TanJL]

My husband took out a credit card in his name which we use just for fuel & pay off every month to increase his credit score.
We also changed his phone contract to be in his name.
We lived at home with my parents before buying our house so unfortunately didn't have any bills in either of our names and at the time didn't have any car finance or anything like that.
If you rent/have bills/finances that you can add your partners name to, that would probably be a good idea.
I would suggest using a website to look up your credit scores & see if there's any advice that your partner can follow to increase their credit score. Some might not be possible, such as registering for the electoral roll etc.