Mortgage on UK house while living abroad

anorthosite

Hi,

I'm about to buy a house in the UK, but I might be living abroad for a few years quite soon. I'll be using the house as a base and living in cheap bedsit style accommodation abroad.

The house will be bought without a mortgage, but I may wish to borrow on the house to do some repairs that are needed (the house is cheap because it needs a lot of doing up).

So, does anyone know what it takes to get a home improvement/equity withdrawl loan of around £15-20k while living abroad?

Any other suggestions?

holly_hobby

The minimum loan on an unencumbered (without mortgage) property is typically 25k (which is in relation to consumer credit law regs).

Anything below this will generally be sought as a personal loan - which could be secured (which in essence is what a mortgage is - as secured loan). A secured personal loan generally having a lower interest rate than an unsecured personal loan.

The property for either a mge (25k+ or secured loan) will generally have to be of a mortgagable quality -i.e have basic utilites, and worth at least what you want to borrow in its condition at the time of valuation (in essence be of suitable security).

So you are looking for a mortgage lender who will lend to an ex-pat (if you apply whilst employed and ordinarilly resident os of the UK), on an unencumbered property.

Or ... a personal loan provider (not necessarily secured unless you want the lowest rate & poss valuation complications re condition) who again will lend to an expat. (however if monies were paid into your UK bank account, from which your loan repayments would be deducted - then I don't see how the loan provider would know you were out of he country for your expat status to cause an issue .. (unless of course they did an inland rev check) )

Anyway just a pointer or 2 to get you started ...

Hope this helps

Holly