Hi,

We plan to move to Canada this Century - if the Visa dudes ever speed up..! House prices are rising in parts of Canada, as I'm sure you know. Has anyone bought a Canadian house whilst still in the UK?

Any experience on releasing equity from UK property, to put deposit down on the Canadian home? We only have a small mortgage on our UK home, thankfully, but if we release equity, use 35% to buy in Canada, will it all work?? You can have a Canadian mortgage and live outside Canada, I think, i.e pay it from the UK.

Plus points: rent it out, place to stay on arrival, value may go up....

Any thoughts on this are very welcome. It clearly takes mega planning.

All the very best.

Sounds like a decent plan to me. If you only have a small mortgage here in UK you can usually get a further advance quite easily from your UK mortgage provider and use this for a down payment in Canada.

Hi

We are doing exactly that.

We have an account with HSBC and they have been very helpful ....so far.

They have arranged the releasing of equity from our UK property and they have upgraded our account to a Premier a/c which gives extra benefits such as being able to transfer the entire account, plus credit cards over to Canada with no hassle.

They have arranged a pre-approved mortgage in Canada so that when we visit next month if we see a property we want to buy we can go ahead and do so. They require a deposit of 35% and a reference from the UK branch, but other than that no problems with getting a mortgage.

Not sure if you can pay a Canadian mortgage from a UK a/c as this is not an issue for us, but doubt that it would be a problem as long as the money is paid. We have a Canadian bank a/c which we set up 18 months ago, but this will become redundant when our premier a/c transfers over.

Not sure if we will keep the HSBC as our primary bank once in Canada as we hear that some other banks are better, but we are using and abusing whilst we can!

We now have our visas, so this visit will be our last before landing. We hope to buy a property on this visit and then return to the UK whilst the process goes through and then move over when the house is ours so we have a permanent address and don't have to bother with hotels etc.

let me know if you need any other info.

Jane

Hi,
We have moved over to Vancouver from the UK in Nov. We did precisely what Canada Jane did. We are Premier account holders in UK, they opened up a Premier A/c in Vancouver. Arranged the mortgage offer everything! When we came over, we chose the house, put down 35% and are buying it on Interest only loan (4.75%) until house sells in UK when we intend to pay it off unless the interest rate for savings in the Uk is higher than the mort rate in Vancouver, in which case we will consider investing our capital in the Uk and continue the mort here. The house prices here are going up so fast that I advise that you buy as soon as you possibly can. Our house here was 580,000 CAD in Jan, and is now valued at 610,000 CAD !!!! get your house as soon as poss. Also if you can get Premier status with HSBC, they treat you like royalty - well worth it. No charges for cash transfers etc. Any further help I can be, please contact me. We have been through most of it and would love to help others in passing it on if you want it!
Bazcop

Thanks Bazcop, Canada Jane, h_henry, excellent info. on this. I'll look into the HSBC Premier Acc. We met the HSBC guy at Sandown Exhib. Naturally he was keen to tell us the benefits of having a financial foothold in Canada with their bank, anyway, it sounds convinient. Any taxation issues?

You've obviously planned well, and its worked for you. All the very best.

I have a house in BC and am still stuck here in Blighty...

The purchase was very easy. The realtor and solictor were just great and there were no problems.

It was a cash purchase which meant I just needed to set up a Canadian bank account to get things moving. This was easy, requiring just a 10 minute visit to the local CIBC branch with a UK credit card and passport.

From there it was just a matter of transferring money from the UK to Canada which with my bank (First Direct) takes just a few hours and costs £20. All monies paid from CIBC were done either by banker's draft or by transfer via a fax.

9 months ago I bought a small commercial unit in the same town and mortgaged the Canadian house to fund it.

The original plan was to borrow the money against the house in the UK which would have meant extending the mortgage facility by about £15k. Because I had a new job and was on a probabtion period the bank wouldn't let me do this! That plus the cheaper Canadian interests rates and the weak pound meant that it was much cheaper to borrow the money in Canada.

Getting the mortgage was easy and done via a broker in Cranbrook, BC. He was very proactive and great with communication. The LTV was about 50%.

The only "pain" was having to get stuff notarised and the extra time all this paperwork introduced to the buying process.

To summarise:

- It is possible to buy
- It is easy to buy
- You can get a mortgage in Canada or borrow it here, but the former is probably cheaper.

Feel free to contact me if you need any more info.

Ian.

just in the process of doing that very thing. we got some really good advise from Abbey, which is our mortgage company. go on the net and type into google 'mortgage offers' and there will be a host of companies who are happy to let you know the whys and wherefores. good luck.

We did exactly that as well!
We had sold our house in Scotland and living with parents :scared:
We used some of the profit to buy a Duplex in BC, rented it out and its making us more money than we could make if we put it in the highest interest account we could find! (And thats not including the interest from the remainder!)
We have relations over in BC who look after the rental etc. but actually buying the place was a doddle!
Hope to see it again real soon!
K

No... but I bought a house in the UK and then within a week after completion decided I wanted to move back to Canada. The upside is that this strategy of property investment doesn't require mega planning at all! Just be utterly directionless in life and make decisions based on whims!

Thanks again Ian and everyone for the info.
How is your property when left empty? i.e any problems with burst pipes etc.?
Local Amenity charges?
Have you tried Renting? If so, do you use a 'Letting Agent'?

Just wondered. The downside is Distance, and getting time away from work to deal with your pad across the pond....but there are way more plus points for sure.

Thanks and Kind Regards.

great info, we were maybe planning to do the same. Did you have a job when they gave you the mortgage?

The property is rented at the moment, though that wasn't the plan... I was told by another Brit (that had just rented his out) about someone that was looking for a place like mine. As it happens this person had put a wanted ad in the local paper and having a restaurant at the ski hill I figured he should be ok.

I wouldn't have worried about burst pipes, just turned the water off, left the heating on low and asked an neighbour to check when things got really cold.

As for local taxes, they have to be paid and they're not cheap, nearly $3000 I think :scared:

Being on good terms with my realtor is handy because I feel I can always talk to him if there are any problems or just for advice.

I wouldn't have any objection to using a letting agent, though my realtor isn't licensed to do it. But the plan wasn't to rent it orginally so probably wouldn't have bothered.

i.

Great, you got someone to rent anyway, even though you didn't intend it. All helps reduce the mortgage etc. Rentals are in great demand, but of course, gotta be careful who to rent to.

Thanks again.

You could always buy a new build chose you plot and house type etc. As theses are taking roughly a year to build (Calgary area) this means you have the benefits of a new house at todays prices (they are going up rapidly) Also some builders only require 5% down and the rest on completion (Morrisons I know is doing this) This will give you visa time and it will mean you haven't got the worry of renting it out. Obviously if you still havent go your visas by then (will keep my fingers crossed for you) then you can rent it out or sell it at a profit (as completed houses are more expensive) and but another plot??! Just a suggestion
Wallace

If you own houses in both UK and canada, when you then come to sell the UK one, will you get caught for 50% capital gains tax as your Canada property would be your prime residence??

Linda