r0briley

So when I return to England in August I have to find a rental property for me and my son. As my bank account will still be in the USA because I can't open one in the UK until I have a permanent address how do I go about paying for the rental? I'm assuming that any landlord/lady will want proof that I can pay the six months rent (or whatever it is before offering me the property) Sorry if this is an obvious question but I'm getting very confused with it all-Thanks

Spacecake799

Hi,
Is there HSBC where you are? If so you can open a global account with them, transfer your money over, you will get UK cards as well.
Do you have family in the UK or a friend. You could always transfer the rental money to them and they can write a cheque for the 6 months.
We rented a property sight unseen from New Zealand. When my husband arrived he drove to the agents and collected the keys.
Good Luck

Editha

We rented a place in Canada when we first arrived, and we paid the deposit in cash.

r0briley

Good advice-Thanks
I am in the process of trying to open a HBSC account here in the USA and hoping I can transfer it when I arrive in England. I think to open a global account they charge you $200 (or am I wrong?)
I was just looking at properties in the area I want to rent and was on the street view cam and lo and behold there was a HSBC bank right on the local High St :-)

Spacecake799

Hi,
For the global account which allows you to transfer money between a US and UK HSBC account for free its all down to the amount of money needed to open the account.
In the UK that's around £50,000 I think, NZ was $100,000.

r0briley

Guess I'll be paying then :-)

janeyk

Just a word of warning we had big issues with HSBC depending where you live the smaller branches have no idea how it wiorks and we struggled to open an account upon return to UK

robin1234

I assume that what a lot of people do is stay with friends or family, rent a holiday cottage, or stay in a hotel or b&b for a month or so and seek to find a rental within that time.

SUPERCAD

we moved to the UK in Jan with 2 dogs and managed to get a rental we had to pay 6 months in advance because their was no credit history. we are just about to renew our lease when the landlord tried to get us to pay another 6 months in advance. We haven't done this and managed to get a bigger and better place.
The Agents play a big role in if you get a place and some are better than others (PM ill let you know who gave us sh1t) they all double dip getting a fee from the tenants and the landlord for doing very little work. dont let them bully you into signing stupid contracts just cause your from overseas
when we were looking from OZ we had help from my daughter but in the end it came down to having to go straight from the airport to the agent to pay and sign. My daughter even offered to sign guarantor
the best advice i can give you is to get a foot print ASAP make it a priority to get on the voters reg (has to be done on line now) get a bank account (Barlays were great to us Net west were not interested) get your NI number if you haven't got one also get a NHS number. try and get a credit card it might take a few months. also try and buy something on account and then pay it off, all of this will help your credit score . go to Experian and follow your score so you know whats going on.

London1947

I don't know if the rules have changed however this is what happened to me on returning to the UK after 30 years in the US... Nat West bank wanted to do a credit check before they would offer me an account. Of course that wasn't going to fly as I had no credit rating in the UK. I then went to Lloyds they opened an account just based on my US/UK passport I am a duel citizen. As all my banking was in the US I just printed out my accounts to show them and that was it, quite simple and no credit check required.

If you manage to find a property to rent once again show the Estate agent the same print outs of US banking. But they wanted a guarantor but the guarantor had to have a minimum salary per year, my Niece did not have the required amount per year. so I had to pay 6 months in advance. This was all done without a firm address.
So what I have been doing for the past 2 years is transferring money from my US account into Lloyds to pay for rent ect. The only downside to this is you have to pay a transfer fee and also you may be up or down on the exchange rate. But it is doable.

Hope this makes sense.