London property finance for Singaporean residents

Head of Insurance

Victoria Barton

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Key facts:

• Client: A French and Spanish national living in Singapore
• Property price: £1,450,000
• LTV: 34.48%
• Rate: 3.99%, over 10 years

At Enness, we are experts in arranging mortgages in London for foreign nationals, expats and non-residents.

In this case, we were approached by a couple living in Singapore. Mr was an investment director and Mrs was a headteacher of a well-respected school.  

The clients owned 2 flats in a Victorian conversion and wanted to revert the property back into one single-family dwelling for them to live in. They also wanted the lender to take the charge over the freehold and have the two leasehold titles rescinded. 

They had lived in the UK in the past and hence wanted to have the converted property to live in for when they returned. Since they had no definite plans of when this would happen, they wanted some flexibility from the lender around the usage of the property while they were overseas. 

This case proved to be challenging because the couple wanted to convert this into one dwelling and get the funds to do so from the bank before the titles had been changed accordingly – most banks will only lend once the renovations have been done. Secondly, the clients were currently overseas and non-UK nationals earning in a foreign currency which ruled out even more lenders. The final challenge was that there was no particular date of return, so we needed a lender to be completely flexible. 

I approached Tandem who is a key partner of ours and can assist in these type of scenarios. They were flexible enough to apply a buy-to-let rate to the loan while the clients were overseas and the works took place, and have agreed a residential rate will be applied when they confirm they’re in the UK which is exactly the outcome they needed.