Buying a house in Canada (toronto)

Firestorm_2

Hi everybody.

After following advice from this site, and other places, I cleared my debt of £18k and now I want to save up to work towards my dream of buying a house and living in Toronto in the next 3 to 4 years.

I am currently at £0, and I am able to save about £800 per month, meaning after 3 years I should have around £30k that should be enough for me to move to toronto and put a deposit on a house there.

I am all sorted with my Visa issues and things like that, and I have lots of friends there, so I am certain I could get a job out there. I used to live and work there in my student days, so I know it is the city I want to live in forever.

I am currently a single, 25 year old guy, and I currently only have a british passport / bank accounts etc.


Has anybody here looked into Canadian mortgages, and does anyone have any tips or things to look for?

I cannot decide if I should get a Canadian mortgage from a Canadian bank (it is unlikely that they would lend to me as I am not currently a citizen) or from a British bank, or a specialist lender.

I currently bank with HSBC and have a graduate account that claims they can do 100% mortgages, and that they are "the worlds local bank" but nobody in my branch can actually help me with Canadian properties!

I have set myself a target of 3 to 4 years to do this move, so plenty of time to sort out paperwork and planning. Since I have only recently paid off all my debts I have been focusing on what I want to do with my future.

Does anybody have any suggestions at all in this area?

Thanks

Firestorm

silaslang

You could ask in http://britishexpats.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=56

There is tons of info and help available there. I too would like to move to Canada after I finish uni but I havent fully researched everythign yet though.

Firestorm_2

Thanks for the link.

Does anyone else have any advice?

gelato_cat

Firestorm wrote:

After following advice from this site, and other places, I cleared my debt of £18k and now I want to save up to work towards my dream of buying a house and living in Toronto in the next 3 to 4 years.

I am currently at £0, and I am able to save about £800 per month, meaning after 3 years I should have around £30k that should be enough for me to move to toronto and put a deposit on a house there.

I am all sorted with my Visa issues and things like that,

What kind of visa do you have?

Firestorm wrote:

I cannot decide if I should get a Canadian mortgage from a Canadian bank (it is unlikely that they would lend to me as I am not currently a citizen) or from a British bank, or a specialist lender.

Not true. Plenty of non-Canadian citizens get mortgages from Canadian lenders.

Firestorm wrote:

I currently bank with HSBC and have a graduate account that claims they can do 100% mortgages, and that they are "the worlds local bank" but nobody in my branch can actually help me with Canadian properties!

Why are you looking for the mortgage first? My bext advice would be to go there and have a look at the property market and talk to a few mortgage providers. I don't see much point in having your mortgage arranged before you've even left the UK

Suze