At the same time, a growing number of UK-based professionals are choosing to relocate, often retaining property as part of a longer-term strategy rather than severing ties altogether. “We’ve seen a huge uptick in professionals in the UK saying we’re out,” Marshall said, with many opting to “rent my property and I’m going to live in this part of the world.”
What links both trends is a change in how borrowers view location and financial planning. Decisions are less tied to a single geography and more aligned to flexibility, income and lifestyle. As Marshall put it, “Since 2020, people are a lot more confident to be transient and say, I’m not happy in this situation, I’m going to do something about it.”
Preparation plays a central role
The main challenges are rarely structural but often come down to how cases are approached at the outset.
“The biggest challenges that expat clients face when trying to secure a UK mortgage today are misinformation on the internet, talking to brokers who perhaps don’t specialize in expat mortgages,” Marshall said.
In some cases, relatively small issues can affect outcomes. “There’s quite a lot of expats that leave the UK and inadvertently have a mobile phone contract that goes rogue on them,” he said. “They might be earning 200k a year now, but they’ve got some adverse [credit].”