barraclm

I am a UK citizen (also US) married for 17 years to a US citizen. We lived in the UK for the first 7 years, then moved to the US where we have been for 10 years and now we are planning to move back. My wife had a spouse visa when she came to the UK in 2001 but this has lapsed as we have been abroad too long. She is therefore about to apply for a new spouse visa. We have no finance/relationship/language issues. However we seem to have a big accommodation issue - we don't have any in the UK! We owned our own house in the UK before we left for the USA and have owned 2 houses in the USA. The current house will be sold and provide more than enough funds to buy a house in the UK. We have some idea of which part of the country we want to live in and were planning to arrive stay in hotels/guest houses etc while we looked at areas and properties. This could take 2-6 months. Does anyone have any experience or advice as to how to deal with this situation on the visa application (which assumes that the applicant is coming to join a sponsor who already resides in the UK and does not seem to recognise that you might both be living abroad)?

BritInParis

You’ll need to arrange accommodation as part of your application even if it’s temporary. Living in hotels for several months would be very expensive. Long term Airbnb rentals or short term rental would likely be cheaper and more acceptable to use as evidence of accommodation for your application. You should include details of how you plan to proceed regarding accommodation in your covering letter.