bigdave764

Just wondering if anyone else is having the same challenge as us in regards extending their existing UK mortgage?

We have had a mortgage for more than 6 years with Halifax on our UK house. I've previously extended the borrowing (in late 2009) and this was no drama.

However, I'm now finding that as a consequence of the tighter lending criteria, Halifax will no longer lend to expats, including extra borrowing to existing customers - which is pretty irritating given that we were expats at the time of application - so they're effectively preventing us from accessing features of the mortgage that were advertised when we took the loan and we have quite a fair amount of equity 'trapped' in our UK house.

Has anyone found a way around this?

I've contemplated changing the address of the mortgage to my parents house in the UK, before applying but wonder if they'll also ask for UK payslips etc?

CarltonCrabbe

Hi Bigdave, you are correct. Most UK high street lenders are taking a far more negative view of mortgage lending to British expats since the credit crunch of 2008, such a distant memory but still alive for lenders. I work in finance and had a similar problem with HSBC when leaving the UK to become an expat, I told them they were leaving and so i had to change products. I have found Nedbank Private Wealth to be accommodating for exapts and whilst they only lend around 60% loan to value, they are very good at looking at lending you more based on the assets and cash you have with them.

bigdave764

Thanks mate - I already have about 59% LTV so I'd need a provider that will go higher. The challenge is also that we're on an interest rate (BoE + 0.79%) that is way better than what's on the market, so would much prefer to persuade Halifax to budge on extending us to 75% LTV rather than move the mortgage to a different provider!

CarltonCrabbe

That is a great mortgage rate. I don't believe you will find that in today's market, those rates were the heady days of 2008/2009 presumably ? Definitely, as you say, try and keep that rate, its very good.