Background

Dimitri came to us as a first time buyer and being self employed he wanted to be able to buy his first home, He had a good level of savings ready to buy but thought it wasn’t possible as he was self employed and showed a very tax efficient income on his tax return plus also he is Ukrainian and while he had been in the united kingdom for some time his Visa had expired and was currently undergoing an application for indefinite rights to reside. He ideally want to buy a £300,000 house in North Kent for commuting reasons.

Challenges

There were a few challenges that we had to navigate in order to be able to get Dimitri the mortgage he needed with the right level of borrowing, we needed to be able to maximise his income as his tax calculations for the previous few years were showing sub £25,000 in income and this was not enough income for Dimitri on his own to be able to get the property he needed. As a CIS contractor we needed a lender that would look at his gross income instead on his CIS vouchers.

We also needed a lender that was happy with his current status, most lenders require indefinite rights to reside or at least some time remaining on a visa which Dimitri had neither.

Solution

We used a lender that would use the latest three months average of his gross income on his CIS vouchers which meant we could show his income at £49876 instead, which meant we could get borrowing £236,910 which made it viable for Dimitri to buy a house, this also meant with his available deposit he could increase his budget over what initially he wanted.

The lender we recommended also allowed us to apply their standard criteria as Dimitri had been working in the country for more than two years already, we supplied them with a letter of his application for indefinite rights to reside to make sure they understood that Dimitri’s intentions were to settle roots in the country.

We processed the decision in principle which enable Dimitri to be able to offer on a property and the application took just over a week to get to offer because we had direct access to the lenders underwriter and stayed on the phone with them while all the relevant checks were carried out until satisfied.

Results

• Dimitri offered on a property and got his first house
• The lender we used was a high street lender with a competitive rate of 1.81% for five years (overall comparison for cost 3.5% APRC)
• We got a much higher loan amount that if we had used his tax calculations
• No issues on not having permanent residency status.