Nathan Waller, business development manager (BDM) at Family Building Society, said it was seeing “more and more younger customers” in the expat mortgage market.
He said they could be moving for work, possibly working with the same employer in a different country, or they are moving to a different country as a “cheaper place to potentially live”.
Waller continued: “The cost of living is beginning to impact that market, where they’re looking at their quality of life, what income they could earn doing the same job in a different country, what costs there are involved in living in that country and then comparing it.
“The job market has also changed. Some countries are introducing kind of digital nomad visas, for example, where people can move abroad, live in a different country, and actually still, potentially even work for the UK business that they’ve always… worked for, but logging [in] via Teams or Zoom.”
He added that the expat mortgage market is “increasing” on both the residential and buy-to-let (BTL) side.
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Geography of expat market changing
Paul Roberts, senior account director at Family Building Society, said there have also been changes in geography.
He explained that traditional locations were for European destinations like France, Spain and Portugal for older borrowers looking to retire, as well as countries like the US, Canada and Australia.
However, at the moment, he said there was more business coming from the Gulf States, such as Saudi Arabia and Dubai, due to the job market and quality of life.
“There is a huge opportunity in this market to look after your clients, to educate your clients, to educate yourself in terms of what each lender does,” Roberts added.
One avenue that brokers can explore if they only do one or two expat cases was to use the expertise of a packager.
“There are considerations about making sure that the documents are suitably notarised or stamped and certified. Each lender has quite often different rules around minimum income and other criteria. The packagers are really useful at knowing the different criteria, because they’d see on a day-by-day or week-by-week basis.
“We work very closely with packagers to help brokers as part of the educational piece, and packagers for us are a really great part of helping educate brokers,” Roberts noted.
Watch the 16:14 video talking about the expat mortgage market, chaired by Anna Sagar, deputy editor of Mortgage Solutions, with Paul Roberts, senior account director at Family Building Society, and Nathan Waller, BDM at Family Building Society.
