Case Study: Keeping and Letting a UK Home After a Move to Australia

The Client

Dom owned a residential property in the UK, with a mortgage in place, and had accepted a job offer in Australia. He was due to emigrate within three months and had no intention of selling. The home had served him well and he wanted to keep it, letting it out to tenants once he had relocated.

The Objective

Dom wanted to retain the property and turn it into a long term let, generating rental income while he built a new life in Australia. He was keen for the property to be earning from as close to his departure as possible, and he needed a mortgage arrangement that would still be suitable once he was living overseas as an expat landlord.

The Complication

The obstacle was timing. The product Dom would ultimately need is an Expat Buy to Let mortgage, but having approached a number of expat lenders on his behalf, the consistent message was that they wanted to see him actually living and working in Australia before they would consider an application.

As a borrower who had not yet moved, Dom had no overseas address, no established Australian income record and no settled arrangements for a lender to underwrite. A standard Expat Buy to Let simply could not be arranged from the UK before he left.

How We Assessed Options

With the end goal clear, we worked through the routes available to Dom, weighing what each could achieve against the timing of his move and his change of residency status.

Step 1: Expat Buy to Let before leaving the UK

The most direct option would have been to arrange the eventual product straight away. In practice it was a non-starter. Expat lenders assess the borrower on their overseas circumstances, and with Dom still in the UK there was no Australian address, employment history or income to present. We ruled this out as premature rather than unsuitable. It becomes the right product later, just not yet.

Step 2: Remortgage onto a standard UK Buy to Let now

We also looked at moving Dom onto a standard UK Buy to Let while he was still resident in the UK. The difficulty is that a standard Buy to Let is built around a borrower who is, and will remain, UK resident. Dom’s imminent move to Australia was a material fact, and one we were fully aware of, so it would have to be disclosed to any lender we approached. On that basis a standard Buy to Let lender would decline, as they will not offer a resident product to an applicant they know is about to leave the country. It was not a route genuinely open to us, so we ruled it out.

Step 3: Consent to Let now, then Expat Buy to Let once settled

The route we identified was to keep things simple in the short term and get the timing right for the longer term. Dom would ask his current lender for Consent to Let before leaving, allowing the property to be let under his existing mortgage as soon as he had gone. Then, once he was living and working in Australia and could evidence it, we would arrange a full Expat Buy to Let built around his new circumstances.

Identifying the Right Route

This sequence met Dom’s objective without forcing a product to fit before the circumstances were ready.

Consent to Let allowed the property to earn from the outset, while the Expat Buy to Let could then be assessed properly on the factors that actually drive these cases: Dom’s employment status in Australia, the currency he would be paid in, and the rental cover calculation on the UK property, where the expected rent must cover the mortgage by a set margin at the lender’s stress rate. Approaching it in this order gave Dom the widest choice of lenders when the time came.