Foreign nationals can get a UK mortgage in 2026 with or without indefinite leave to remain, and in many cases with a deposit of just 5 to 10%. What changes with your immigration status is which lenders will consider you, how much deposit they want, and how they treat your income and credit history. Visa holders living and working in the UK now have access to most of the high street. Overseas buyers with no UK footprint are a specialist and private bank conversation with deposits of 25 to 40%. This guide sets out the visa types lenders accept, the deposit bands by residency status, the lenders writing this business in 2026, and the 2% stamp duty surcharge that catches non-resident buyers.
We arrange mortgages for foreign nationals from £250,000 upwards, from skilled worker visa holders buying their first UK home to non-resident investors funding prime London property through our international mortgages desk. More than half of the visa-holder cases we arrange are couples where one applicant has settled status and the other does not, and those cases are far more placeable than most people assume.
Who lenders will consider
Which visas do UK mortgage lenders accept in 2026?
Most UK lenders now lend to foreign nationals on work and family visas, which was not true five years ago. The visa type matters less than three practical questions: how long you have lived in the UK, how long is left on your permission to stay, and whether your income is earned and taxed here. The table below shows how the main routes are treated in practice.
| Status | How lenders treat it | Typical minimum deposit |
|---|---|---|
| Indefinite leave to remain / EU settled status | Treated as a UK applicant by almost every lender | 5-10% |
| Skilled Worker / Health and Care Worker visa | Accepted widely; time in UK and time left on the visa drive the deposit | 10-15% |
| Spouse or partner visa | Accepted widely, strongest where the other applicant is a UK national | 10-15% |
| Global Talent, Innovator Founder, Ancestry, BN(O) | Accepted by fewer lenders, often on manual underwriting | 15-25% |
| Student visa | Very limited; usually needs a working joint applicant or a specialist route | 25%+ |
| No UK visa, buying from overseas | Specialist lenders, international desks and private banks only | 25-40% |
Time remaining on the visa is the criterion that catches people out. Several lenders want two or more years left at application, others accept less where you have been in the UK for a few years and your occupation supports renewal, and a small group ignore the expiry date entirely if the deposit is 25% or more. What we have noticed over the last year is lenders relaxing their time-in-UK requirements faster than their visa-time-remaining requirements, so an applicant eighteen months into a five-year visa is now often easier to place than one four years into it.
According to the Office for National Statistics, 898,000 people moved to the UK long term in the year ending June 2025, with net migration of 204,000, so the pool of working visa holders looking to buy rather than rent remains substantial. Source: ONS, Long-term international migration, provisional: year ending June 2025.
The money question
How much deposit does a foreign national need?
Deposit requirements track residency status, and the bands are wide. With indefinite leave to remain you are effectively a UK borrower and 5 to 10% deposits are available on normal terms. On a work or family visa the realistic range is 10 to 25%: the best cases, meaning two or more years in the UK, a professional occupation, UK-taxed income and clean UK banking, sit at the bottom of that range, and shorter track records or less time left on the visa push you up it. Buying from overseas with no UK residency, expect 25 to 40% down, with the exact figure driven by the lender, the currency your income is paid in, and the property itself.
The deposit source gets more scrutiny than the deposit size. Funds arriving from overseas accounts need a clear paper trail, usually three to six months of statements plus evidence of where the money originated, and gifts from family abroad need the same treatment plus a gift letter. Start assembling that evidence before you offer on a property. It is the single slowest part of most foreign national applications and the one piece of the file only you can produce.
Who is lending
Which lenders offer mortgages to foreign nationals in the UK?
For visa holders living in the UK, HSBC is generally the most flexible of the high street names and will consider high loan-to-value lending for applicants with time remaining on their visa, helped by its own international footprint. Halifax lends to applicants without permanent rights to reside but generally caps lending around 75% loan to value unless income is comfortably into six figures. Barclays, Santander, NatWest and Nationwide all accept visa holders subject to their own mixes of minimum UK residency, minimum income and time left on the visa, and building societies with manual underwriting pick up the near-miss cases the big banks’ scorecards decline.
For buyers outside the UK the market changes completely. Skipton International lends to expats and some foreign nationals buying UK property from overseas, generally to around 75% loan to value with a minimum income requirement. A group of specialist lenders will fund non-resident purchases and UK rental investments at 60 to 75% loan to value, pricing above the high street. At the top of the market, private banks such as Coutts, Investec and Barclays Private Bank lend to wealthy non-residents against prime UK property, often looking at the whole balance sheet rather than payslips, and that route runs through our high net worth mortgage desk rather than a standard application.
The honest observation from the cases we place: the expiry date on the visa matters more to some underwriters than the income on the payslips. We have seen a surgeon earning £160,000 declined by a scorecard for having seven months left on a visa that renews automatically with her employment, then approved at 90% by another lender the same week. The lender choice is the whole game on these cases.
Rates and lender criteria are subject to change. Figures correct at time of publication. Always speak to your broker for up-to-date rates and lending criteria on your specific case.
Settled vs limited leave
What difference does indefinite leave to remain make?
Indefinite leave to remain, or EU settled status, effectively removes the foreign national overlay. You are underwritten as a UK applicant: normal deposits, normal income multiples, the full lender market. Lenders may still ask how long you have lived in the UK for credit-scoring purposes, but the immigration questions stop.
Limited leave to remain is where all the extra rules live, and they are lender-specific rather than regulatory, which is why two banks can give opposite answers on the same case. If you are within a year or two of qualifying for indefinite leave, it is worth asking whether to buy now on visa-holder terms or wait and buy on settled terms, and the answer is usually to buy now if the deposit and rate you can get today are acceptable, because house price movement and rent paid while waiting usually outweigh the pricing difference. That is a numbers conversation, and we run it with clients regularly.
The tax trap
What is the 2% non-resident stamp duty surcharge?
Buyers who are not UK resident for stamp duty purposes pay a 2% surcharge on top of all other Stamp Duty Land Tax rates on residential property in England and Northern Ireland. The test is presence, not nationality or visa status: HMRC treats you as non-resident if you were in the UK for fewer than 183 days in the twelve months before completion. Spend 183 days or more in the UK in the twelve months after completion and you can reclaim the surcharge. Source: HMRC, Rates of Stamp Duty Land Tax for non-UK residents.
Two details matter in practice. Married couples and civil partners buying together are both treated as UK resident if either one of them passes the 183-day test, which saves the surcharge for a lot of mixed couples. Unmarried joint buyers get no such help: if any buyer is non-resident, the whole transaction is surcharged. And separately, if you already own a home anywhere in the world and are not replacing your main residence, the 5% additional dwelling surcharge usually applies on top. On a £425,000 purchase, the non-resident surcharge alone adds £8,500. Run your own numbers on our stamp duty calculator, which handles non-resident, additional property and first-time buyer cases in one tool.
The invisible problem
What if you have no UK credit history?
A thin UK credit file declines more foreign national applications than income ever does. Credit histories do not cross borders, so an applicant with a flawless record in Sydney or Singapore lands in the UK with a blank file, and blank files score badly with lenders that rely on automated credit scoring. The fix is partly time and partly behaviour, and the behaviour part starts on day one.
Open a UK bank account the month you arrive, put every household bill in your own name at your current address, take a UK credit card and clear it in full monthly, and register on the electoral roll if your citizenship allows it. Twelve to eighteen months of that record moves you from the specialist shelf to the mainstream shelf, and it is the cheapest deposit-reducer there is.
Where the file is still thin, the answer is lender selection rather than waiting. Building societies and specialist lenders that underwrite manually will read bank statements and employer references instead of a credit score, and international banks can sometimes take account of your banking relationship in your home country. The cases we find hardest to place are not thin files or big deposits, they are applicants with under six months left on a visa and nothing in writing about renewal, so if that is you, deal with the visa evidence before the mortgage.
Mixed-status couples
Can a foreign national buy jointly with a UK national?
Yes, and it is one of the most common cases we see. Some lenders underwrite to the weaker immigration status, meaning the visa holder’s position sets the deposit and the lender choice for both of you. Others effectively disregard the foreign national overlay where the UK applicant’s income supports the loan on its own. The gap between those two approaches can be 15% of the purchase price in deposit, so mixed-status couples benefit from a broker more than almost anyone.
For stamp duty, marriage helps: a married couple where one partner passes the 183-day residence test are both treated as UK resident, so no surcharge applies. Unmarried couples where one partner is non-resident pay the 2% surcharge on the whole purchase. We flag this to every mixed-residency couple before they offer, because it occasionally changes the timing of a purchase and, more than once in our experience, has moved a wedding forward.
NHS doctors on Health and Care Worker visas, £425,000 purchase in Reading
A married couple, both doctors from India, eighteen months into their time in the UK with three and a half years left on their visas and a joint NHS income of £98,000. They bought at £425,000 with a 10% deposit of £42,500, borrowing £382,500 at just under 3.9 times income on a five-year fixed rate with a high street lender that accepts Health and Care Worker visas at 90% loan to value. Both passed the 183-day residence test, so no non-resident surcharge applied and their stamp duty was the standard £11,250. The application took six weeks, and the only extra packaging against a standard case was certified passports, visa share codes and a paper trail for deposit funds sent from India.
A different profile lands differently. A US tech executive on a Global Talent visa with heavy stock-based income and eight months of UK address history is not a high street case at all, but placed correctly, with a lender that understands RSU income, she borrows more than the high street would lend a UK national on the same salary. Where the numbers are large or the income is complex, that conversation belongs with our international mortgages team, and the wider range of products for UK buyers is covered across our residential mortgages pages.
Common questions
Frequently asked questions
Can I get a UK mortgage on a skilled worker visa?
Yes. Most high street lenders accept Skilled Worker and Health and Care Worker visa holders in 2026, typically with a deposit of 10 to 15%. The key variables are time already spent in the UK, time remaining on the visa and UK-taxed income. Some lenders want two years left on the visa, others accept less with a larger deposit or a strong professional occupation.
Can I buy a UK property with no visa at all?
You can own UK property without any right to live in the UK, and non-resident buyers finance purchases through specialist lenders, international desks and private banks. Expect a deposit of 25 to 40%, pricing above high street levels, extra source-of-funds checks, and the 2% non-resident stamp duty surcharge on top of the rates that would otherwise apply.
How much deposit does a foreign national need for a UK mortgage?
With indefinite leave to remain, 5 to 10%, the same as any UK buyer. On a work or family visa, typically 10 to 15%, rising to 25% where UK history is short or little time remains on the visa. Non-resident overseas buyers need 25 to 40%. Deposit source evidence matters as much as the amount, especially for funds arriving from overseas.
Which UK banks lend to visa holders?
HSBC, Barclays, Santander, NatWest, Halifax and Nationwide all lend to visa holders in 2026, each with different rules on minimum UK residency, income and time remaining on the visa. HSBC is generally the most flexible on loan to value for visa holders, while Halifax caps lending around 75% without permanent rights to reside unless income is high. Building societies pick up cases needing manual underwriting.
Does indefinite leave to remain guarantee a mortgage?
No mortgage is guaranteed, but indefinite leave to remain removes the immigration overlay entirely: you are assessed as a UK applicant on normal deposits, normal income multiples and the full lender market. Affordability, credit history and deposit still apply as they would for anyone else. EU settled status is treated the same way.
Do foreign nationals pay more stamp duty in the UK?
Only if they are non-resident. The 2% surcharge applies where a buyer spent fewer than 183 days in the UK in the twelve months before completion, regardless of nationality or visa. A foreign national living and working in the UK usually passes the residence test and pays standard rates. Owning another home anywhere in the world can also trigger the separate 5% additional dwelling surcharge.
Can I get a UK mortgage with no UK credit history?
Yes, through lenders that underwrite manually rather than by credit score, including several building societies and specialist lenders. They will work from bank statements, employer references and overseas banking records. Building a UK footprint quickly, through a UK bank account, bills in your name and a credit card cleared monthly, widens your options considerably within twelve to eighteen months.
Can a foreign national buy jointly with a British citizen?
Yes. Some lenders apply their visa-holder rules to the whole application, while others disregard the foreign national overlay where the British applicant’s income supports the loan. For stamp duty, married couples and civil partners are both treated as UK resident if either passes the 183-day test, so no non-resident surcharge applies. Unmarried couples do not get that treatment.
Does Fox Davidson arrange mortgages for foreign nationals?
Yes. We arrange lending from £250,000 upwards for visa holders buying in the UK, expats, and non-resident buyers funding UK property from overseas, including private bank lending for high net worth international clients. Initial conversations to scope your case are free of charge. Call 03300 100313.
Buying in the UK as a foreign national?
We arrange mortgages from £250,000 upwards for visa holders, expats and non-resident buyers, from first UK homes to prime London property funded through private banks. Tell us your visa position, your deposit and the property, and we will tell you which lenders fit.