Mortgage Offer In A Week For Tricky Case

Key facts:

• Clients were British citizens living in the US
• Having recently secured a job in London, the couple decided that they would re-locate to the UK and wanted to buy a home here.
• They had a mortgage in the US on their previous residence that wasn’t sold yet.
• Because they had lived in the US for several years, they didn’t have the standard 3-years address history that lenders normally require.
• One of the clients only started their job 15 days before deciding to proceed with purchasing a property. Most lenders would need you to be in your job for at least 3 months.
• With several issues standing in the way, these clients didn’t know if it was going to possible at all for them to get a mortgage in the UK.

Our client:

Our clients were a couple originally from the UK who had been living in Florida in the USA for several years. They owned their own property in the states with a US mortgage. One of the clients had secured a new well-paid job in the UK that required them to be based in London, so they decided that they would move back to the UK and set up base in southwest London. They moved initially to the UK and rented before deciding that they wanted to try and purchase a property here. But they soon realised that this would prove to be a bit trickier than they anticipated.

The couple approached a few different banks but ran into a lot of problems along the way. Because they still owned a property in the US, a lot of lenders did not like this and included it in affordability calculations which massively impacted their borrowing ability. Even though they planned on selling the US property at some point. Because they had lived in the states for a number of years, they did not have the normal mandatory 3 years UK address history that most high-street mortgage lenders require for credit check purposes. Finally, the client had only been in her job for 15 days at the time, which is a lot below the normal minimum of 3 months in a job that most mortgage lenders require.

With rejections coming left, right, and centre from mortgage lenders, our clients believed that it might be impossible for them to get a permanent base in the UK and were starting to lose hope. Until they called our office and spoke to one of our specialist advisors.

How did we help?

We won’t lie, even to us this was a challenging application. But our advisors won’t take no for an answer, and we had to find our clients a solution. Being an experienced and knowledgeable team, our advisor Jade Pinkerton had an initial consultation with the clients and immediately started her research. Jade went through all of the kickbacks that the clients had experienced so far and worked her way through trying to resolve them all.

Because we have access to over 90 different mortgage lenders, Jade was able to contact several business development managers from mortgage lenders and run the case by each of them to see whether they would accept the scenario. Based on Jade’s research and the merit of the case, she managed to find and place the client’s mortgage application with a high-street lender with a very competitive rate. Because the clients were planning on selling the property they owned in the US, this was acceptable with the lender that Jade found.

Because the clients were UK citizens already and because they were putting down a large deposit, the mortgage lender that Jade found determined that less than 3 years address history was acceptable in this case. Finally, the mortgage lender did initially want 3 months’ payslips for the client however, as the client had a well-paid senior job with no probation period, the lender agreed to accept a copy of the client’s work contract as proof of income instead.

Because of how our advisor researched the lenders so thoroughly and because of how well our administration team packaged the case, the mortgage was offered for our client within one week! Unheard of with most mortgage lenders who normally take several weeks.

What was the rate?

The loan was secured on a capital repayment and interest fixed rate for 5-years at 3.93%. After the fixed period, they would revert to the bank’s 5.74% standard variable rate at which time we will contact the clients to discuss remortgaging on to another new competitive fixed rate. The mortgage term was 14 years.

If you or someone you know is looking to purchase a new property but are struggling to get the lending you need due to any of the above issues, please give our friendly advisor team a call today to discuss your options.