Deposit not yet in the UK

MamaT

Hi, can we put in a full mortgage application when part of the deposit is not yet in the UK? sorry if too long.

FTB- offer accepted on a house @ £300.5k on 20th Nov, asking price was £300k. Vendor has no chain. We have 15% deposit and AIP of £370k from HAlifax no credit issues. 40 & 45 years old so 20 years mortage.

Have £22k in UK and save £2.5k a month so £27k in UK by Dec. Have £30k in home country (all our money from years of working and investment before relocating to UK 6.5 years ago).

Bankers have advised not to transfer funds to UK until 2nd week in December cos of high exchange rate at the moment otherwise will lose abt £1.2k.

Don't want to lose the house by not making due progress and lose £1.2k either, so can we put in mortage application to halifax prior to transfering the funds?

Thank you

hcb42

Yes you can put in an application, you will need the funds before you exchange, and be aware there will be delays over the BH periods over Christmas

amnblog

The lender will most likely want you to prove all the deposit, including any funds currently held abroad.

ValHaller

I would suggest you engage a solicitor ASAP and discuss what proof of source of funds they will require. If it is from overseas, you will probably have to prove you are not terrorists, which will take some time.

MamaT

Ok, thanks all

CapJ

ValHaller wrote: »

I would suggest you engage a solicitor ASAP and discuss what proof of source of funds they will require. If it is from overseas, you will probably have to prove you are not terrorists, which will take some time.

You will have to prove the source of origin of the funds whether from overseas or the UK. Whilst preventing terrorism is one of the purposes of anti money laundering regulations it is not the only one and is a little provocative to highlight in isolation.

Having just gone through this the requirements are no different if the money is from the UK or overseas, bank account statements suffice normally, the checks are not particularly onerous.

On another note I would be cautious about waiting to move funds merely because of the exchange rate. It could go up or down, and no-one can no which way. If it is high at the moment that can only be versus historical data. It could be on an upward trend and continue increasing, or it could be at is peak. One way of minimising the risk is to move the money in batches that way you get the average exchange rate over a period of time (and don´t play on the money markets against professionals). Be careful of transaction fees if you do that. I used transferwise to minimise transaction fees (banks took 3% but transferwise only took 0.5%)

ValHaller

CapJ wrote: »

Whilst preventing terrorism is one of the purposes of anti money laundering regulations it is not the only one and is a little provocative to highlight in isolation.

Hopefully, OP will get the idea and be provoked into getting the source of funds issue resolved now rather than hit some sort of showstopper around the time of exchange.

I once closed a savings account and took the cheque into my bank to deposit, whereupon my bank took me into a room with barred windows to interview me about the source of funds. I don't take officialdom in this fleapit of a country seriously anymore.

Mulder00

MamaT wrote: »

Bankers have advised not to transfer funds to UK until 2nd week in December cos of high exchange rate at the moment otherwise will lose abt £1.2k.

This is terrible advice tbh...you can take a gamble and wait, and maybe they are right, but maybe they are wrong. Nobody can predict the future and nobody can predict what the exchange rate will do.

CapJ

ValHaller wrote: »

Hopefully, OP will get the idea and be provoked into getting the source of funds issue resolved now rather than hit some sort of showstopper around the time of exchange.

I once closed a savings account and took the cheque into my bank to deposit, whereupon my bank took me into a room with barred windows to interview me about the source of funds. I don't take officialdom in this fleapit of a country seriously anymore.

Again a bit of an exaggeration. They asked you some questions about the source of funds. Since you were free to leave at any time (bank staff don´t have detention powers) the barred windows were irrelevant.

Moving money around is not a problem as long as you are a) doing so legitimately b) are willing to answer questions about the money and show documentation if necessary

Goldiegirl

Also bear in mind, funds coming in from some countries are scrutinised more closely than others.

So there could be a delay in releasing the funds if additional checks are needed

MamaT

Points taken and thank you all.

To clarify, there are no issues with proving source of funds- ample proofs exists, payslips, Investment instrctions, roll overs etc plus all the funds have only been recently liquidated from investments to our current account so Instructions to terminate, confirmations all in hand and not a problem at all.

What I was hoping to gather is if it is a requirement that all the deposit has to be in UK at time of mortage application or not.

We asked the mortage advisor @ Halifax who said it not a problem and will be decided at underwriting stage, but after reading others stories of how things said turn out to not hold water further down the line want to know if we should go ahead with the application without yet transfering the funds and save the £1.2k or transfer now and take the hit of £1.2k instead of having our application turned down.