90% Mortgage for US National at Age 65

Securing a UK mortgage as a US national can be difficult - many banks and building societies will flat-out reject your application. But there are actually plenty of lenders out there who will work with you - and if you speak to a specialist mortgage broker, you might be surprised at the possibilities available to you.

This case demonstrates our problem-solving approach to providing solutions for extraordinary mortgage applications.

The Scenario

This client’s application was looking difficult to place from the outset:

• She was a US national
• She had been living outside the UK for around 20 years, although recently returned
• She was 65 years of age, so would potentially need a later life lending product
• She only had a 10% deposit
• She would need to use pension income for her application
• And she’d been told it was impossible to borrow the amount she needed by multiple other brokers and lenders

However, our adviser identified a few key points:

She was married to a Brit and had indefinite right to remain in the UK which solidified her UK residency if applying jointly.

And, she had an office-based job developing IT software which, as a low-intensity job, she could plausibly continue doing for many years to maintain her current income level – the importance of this will become apparent later.

The Solution

After taking a step back and looking at our clients’ broader financial situation, our adviser took the clients’ application straight to a high-street bank.

While it may be expected that this client would need a specialist lender and product for this type of mortgage - our adviser was confident he could place it with one particular bank due to their leniency on age limits.

For this lender, as long as it is plausible that the applicant can keep working until their mortgage ends, they can generally offer a mortgage - regardless of their current age.

So, for a 15-year mortgage, our client could be accepted on the basis that she could keep working her non-physical job as a software developer up to the age of 80.

Our broker liaised closely with the underwriters, ensuring our client’s pension income was accounted for, the loan to value was sufficient and the broader financial context and residency details were fully understood.