Mortgages for Buying Property Abroad

wench90

Hi,

My partner and I currently rent a flat in the UK. Between us we earn £44000 a year but can still not afford to get on the property ladder. We have been considering the possibility of buying abroad instead which may help us raise a deposit for a home here in the future, and help us get on the property ladder. However, we are unsure whether we would be able to get a mortgage for a property abroad in this country without already owning a home?

We have looekd into which UK banks offer mortgages for buying abroad but there don't seen to be many, and those that do lend, do not stipulate whether they will lend to a first time buyer or whether they will only lend to those who already have equity somewhere else? So we were wondering whether anyone knew about overseas mortgages and whether we would be eligible for one despite not owning our own home in the UK?

We are thinking of buying in Bulgaria, so if there's anyone out there who knows anything about Bulgaria and buying there, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Ian_W

Hi wench,
This is not a recommendation but the brokers below are long established in overseas mortgages and may be a good starting point. TBH when we bought in Spain nearly 10yrs ago I thought they were quite expensive, fees wise, but that tends to be the case with overseas finance.

https://www.mortgagesoverseas.com/country.asp?country=125

I've not really studied Bulgaria but quite a few posters on here have been sceptical about it and one point strongly made was that renting isn't strong as yet because packages are as cheap as flight only. So if you hope to rent out to tourists do your reseach first to make sure it is viable.

It's probably like most emerging property markets, with a fair share of crooks and con merchants. Don't believe what developers and EAs tell you and always get independent legal advice.

HTH.

walter1970

I am skeprical about Bulgaria too. Looking at Poland especially Wroclaw, Krakow and Slovakia. You can get a mortgage with a Polish bank upto 85-90% LTV. I have used https://www.propertysecrets.net in the past to get insight on the market in Eastern Europe but there is a subs of £7.95/month and if they source a property for you, there's a finder's fee of around £3k which put me off but I must say they do very indepth research which some of the members feel it is worth the finder's fee. Hope this helps.

Walt

wench90

Thanks for the advice,

We've heard that we could only get up to 70%LTV with a mortgage in Bulgaria which put us off a bit. One of the reasons we picked Bulgaria because of it's up and coming ski resorts and the facts that it will join the EU soon but I have do reservations. I guess we'd better start saving !!!

Thanks again.

HGLTsuperstar

By the sounds of it, you have nothing to put down, in which case you'd be very very very unlikely to get a 100% mortgage overseas. If that is the route you want, with 44K joint income, you could something over here in the 140-150K bracket