oLala587

My BF and I have been together for 4 years. He's English and I'm American. I'm a flight attendant for AA w/ great travel benefits - he is a secondary school P.E. Teacher in England - he is just finishing his first year as an NQT (newly qualified teacher). *he has not moved/applied for work in US yet. We are looking into H1B visa.

My BF owns property in England & would like to keep this home, whilst moving/working/living primarily in America. The English home will be a 2nd home for us that we live in during school holidays.
In 5 years he is meant to be remortgaging the home & is supposed to pay his parents off £30K at that time (when his earnings have increased & he is able to borrow more on his own).

Are there banks in England that will remortgage (aka refinance) to an English citizen who is living/working/earning money in dollars in the US?

Thanks for any guidance, very appreciative.

sir_eccles

You should probably get married. A PE teacher is unlikely to get an H1B.

oLala587

Is it unlikely for him to get any work visa in the US? His friend seemed to get one pretty easily for soccer coaching.
We were planning to do work visa to start, then get engaged and switch to spousal visa.

Pulaski

Soccer coaching would be a J-1, which is inherently temporary. If you have access to a marriage visa, I don't think anyone will recommend trying to get a work visa as a "stepping stone", and I can't think of many reasons why anyone would want to do so.

A work visa must be paid for by the employer, and no public school district is going to cough up $5,000-$10,000 of visa and legal fees just to get a school teacher. Also, as of today, the earliest start-work date for a H-1B is October 1, 2017, and there is only a 33%-50% chance that an application next spring will be successful anyway!

Please take a careful look at this very recent thread, which has a lot of information which you will find useful, and hopefully interesting - coincidentally it also relates to a British citizen who is qualifying as a teacher.

cautiousjon

OP, am I right in assuming that you have a permanent residence in the USA somewhere? If so, as Pulaski said, if you're planning on getting married in the future and thus switch your (future) husband onto a marriage-based green card, I cannot think of many reasons why you wouldn't do that straight away.

You could both get married in the UK (or USA, or pretty-much anywhere else, if you'd prefer), he'd go back to the UK, and then you could apply for an CR1 visa. This would allow you to bring him to the USA with you, as your spouse, and he would be immediately granted a green card upon arrival, and he could work straight away, for any employer.

H1 visas are notoriously hard to get, with the next batch not being released until next April, with confirmation being given in October 2017, and as Pulaski said, they have to be sponsored by an employer.

oLala587

Okay thanks for the heads up on the visas. I read the long post/discussion thread that Pulaski had linked & it is very helpful. I think spousal visa makes the most sense for us. Yes I have a permanent US address and home.

Appreciate the help & info!

If anyone knows or can comment on the UK property/mortgage piece that would be really great too

Pulaski

I think he will have extreme problems in refinancing a home in the UK based on income in the US. It is reportedly extremely difficult to refi even a rental property in the UK if you're overseas, but if the proprty isn't even generating income, well, gee! ..... He should plan on the assumption that the refi in five years will not be possible.

Also owning property long-term in the UK while resident in the US creates a significant capital gains tax issue, and what you/he is proposing seems like a very expensive way to have a "free" home for vacations in the UK.

Finding insurance for a home that is vacant long-term is also going to be an issue, and I suspect that he won't be able to get contents insurance at all.

All things considered, I would recommend selling the home, and saving the mortgage payments, tax and insurance, then renting a vacation home when you need one, which would have the added advantage that you wouldn't be tied to one place but could enjoy different parts of the UK, or even Europe.

mrken30

Only is the gain is realized. If it will become a permanent holiday home, different story. You can still sell using 1031 exchange to buy a different foreign property. It's not always simple though.

oLala587

Okay thanks for the insight. I had a feeling it was going to be kind of tough :-/ and not as simple as we'd hoped

mrken30

It looks like HSBC will give buy to let mortgages if you earn over £75k.

If you are not going to have an income in GBP , and do not plan on keeping it forever. It can be done, but may be more trouble than you gain out of it.

Insurance is a biggie if the property is vacant for more than 60 days, some policies are only 30.

I do have property in the UK , but it's hard work. We are keeping the property long term though and have no mortgage.

oLala587

Okay thanks that is very helpful. We're going to speak to his friend who initially did his mortgage and see what options are for refinancing down the road, and also maybe could rent it out to avoid the insurance issue? We aren't in the £75K range yet & definitely need a mortgage unless a wealthy family member wants to help us out!

Ozzidoc

Quick sidenote. The soccer coach visa is most often via the H2B, which is even more temporary as it is seasonal.

SarahG

We remortgaged our home in the UK in about 2011/2012 with Halifax. We were letting our house and got an appropriate remortgage with them. We had no problems doing so, but this was 4/5 years ago. We sold the house in January this year and our US tax return was a lot of fun. Luckily we were not hit by a huge CGT bill.

mrken30

Did you consider 1031 or did you just decide it was not worth keeping?

SarahG

No, I just wanted shot of it. We will not return to live in the UK, and even if we did we would not live there, so it made no sense to keep it. It made more sense to use the equity to buy somewhere over here.