UK Mortgage Calculator for Foreigners

Yes. There is no law preventing a foreign national from buying property or borrowing in the UK, and there is no minimum nationality or immigration status written into mortgage regulation. What varies is which lenders will consider you and on what terms. In practice the questions a lender asks are: how long you have lived in the UK, how long is left on your visa, whether you have a UK credit history, and whether your income is paid in sterling. High-street lenders are most comfortable with applicants who have indefinite leave to remain or settled status; those on a time-limited visa are usually served by a smaller set of lenders and often through a broker. Being turned down by one bank tells you very little about the market as a whole, because criteria on this differ more between lenders than almost any other part of mortgage lending.

More than a UK citizen with the same income, and how much more depends mostly on whether you live here. Typical ranges reported in 2026: roughly 10-25% if you are resident in the UK with an established credit history, and roughly 25-40% if you are buying from overseas. Some lenders will go lower for applicants with settled status or a long UK employment record, and a few now advertise 5% products for foreign nationals after a period of UK residence. Treat all of these as market practice rather than rules — they are set by individual lenders, they change, and they are the single thing most worth checking with a broker before you start viewing. The one number on this page that is a legal certainty rather than a lender preference is the stamp duty surcharge.

Since 1 April 2021, buyers who are not UK resident pay an extra 2% of SDLT on top of every other rate that applies, on residential property in England and Northern Ireland. It is not a separate band — it is added to each band, so it applies to the whole price rather than just the portion above a threshold. On a £400,000 purchase it adds £8,000; on £750,000 it adds £15,000. It stacks with the 5% additional-property surcharge, so an overseas buyer purchasing a second home or buy-to-let can be paying 7 percentage points above the standard rates. Scotland and Wales run their own systems (LBTT and LTT) and are not covered by this surcharge or by this calculator.

For SDLT the test is simply whether you spent at least 183 days in the UK in the 12 months ENDING on the day you complete. Fewer than 183 days and you are non-resident for this purpose, whatever your nationality or visa. Two things surprise people. First, this is not the Statutory Residence Test used for income tax — the two are separate, and you can be UK-resident for income tax while still counting as non-resident for SDLT, or the reverse. Second, it is about days present, not intent: someone who moved to the UK eight months before completion is still non-resident for the surcharge. If your 183rd day falls close to your completion date, the order of those two dates is worth thousands of pounds and is worth raising with your solicitor.

Often, yes — and this is the part most buyers miss. If you spend at least 183 days in the UK during the 12 months AFTER the purchase, you can reclaim the surcharge from HMRC even though you correctly paid it at completion. Buyers who are moving to the UK and complete before they arrive frequently qualify. The refund is not automatic: you have to claim it, there is a time limit, and by the time you become eligible the purchase is a year behind you and easy to forget. Diarise it on completion day. If you are buying jointly, remember the surcharge was charged on the whole transaction, so the position of every buyer matters to the claim.

Yes, and to the entire purchase — not to that person's share. If any buyer in a joint purchase is non-resident under the 183-day test, the 2% applies to the full price. Married couples and civil partners living together are treated as a single unit for the test, so if one spouse is non-resident the couple generally is. This is the most expensive detail on this page for couples where one partner has moved to the UK ahead of the other: completing a few months later, once the second person has passed 183 days, can be worth more than any rate you will negotiate on the mortgage itself.

It helps a great deal, and its absence is usually what causes a decline rather than nationality itself. Lenders typically want to see one to two years of UK financial history — a current account, a phone contract, being on the electoral roll where eligible — because a thin file makes affordability impossible to verify with their normal scorecards. If you have recently arrived, the practical route is a lender that manually underwrites rather than credit-scores, which usually means going through a broker. Note that a strong credit record in another country generally does not transfer; from a UK lender's perspective you are starting from nothing, which is frustrating but is a data problem rather than a judgement about you.

No. Scotland charges Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) and Wales charges Land Transaction Tax (LTT), each with their own thresholds and their own rules for additional properties. The 2% non-resident surcharge modelled here is an SDLT rule and applies in England and Northern Ireland only. The repayment side of the calculator is fine anywhere — a mortgage is a mortgage — but the tax figure will be wrong for a Scottish or Welsh purchase, so use your nation's own calculator for that half.