Mortgages in Poland while living and working in the UK?

Hi there, my Polish wife and I currently live in the UK in our own house (with a mortgage). The thing is, we want to buy something over in Poland in or near to Zabierzów (Krakow area) because sooner or later we will most likely end up in Poland. It's certaily where I want to raise a family once I can speak the lingo.

Preferably looking to get a mortgate in GBP as opposed to Zloty's because thats the currency we both earn in. So where is the best place to go to get a mortgage on a house over in Poland while living and working in the UK? Does anybody recommend any spcialist UK companies at all?

Also, does it make a difference if we wanted to build a house over a number of years as opposed to just buying one? I know when buying a house you're meant to budget for around 10% in Polish fees etc. but not sure if there are any additional fees when building.

I'm reading profusely through threads on this forum. However, if anyone has any tips or advice to offer it would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers in advance all.

Hi Marcus, best would be to find international estate agents that operates in Poland as well as in UK, but even if they don't operate in UK, big estate agents (like Emmerson Nieruchomosci, AD Dragowski) should be able to guide you.

You will most certainly speak to your banks in UK and in Poland about financing options, generally you can take mortgage for certain portion (I think at some stage it was 70% if you are non resident in Poland, but this could have change).

Hey up Sally, thanks for the info. I've had a look at those two sites too although for whatever reason they seem to be a lot more expensive than others I've looked at. Saying that though I have noticed that any site that translates to English seem to give you less for your money than a native Polish site (Gogle translate or the wife for the win :D).

Fees are negotiable, there are lots of agents, make sure you use reputable one, those two are just examples. They have nice offices in Warsaw, so quite a something to maintain ;-)

How did it go Markus?

I was in a similar situation as yourself with exception I'm Irish and both my wife and I were working in Ireland when applied

We got a mortgage eventually with Nordea (only other real alternative was Deutsche Bank) but it was an incredibly long drawn out process and we ended up having to to give my wife's mother power of attorney to act on our behalf given the number of documents that needed to be lodged and signed - usual multiple versions of each as they either misplaced copies or took so long to process that they were too old by the time they got to them! All this by the way while having owning the site whose value was around 1.5 times the size of the mortgage...

Took about five months to get it but we got there eventually. In a way it;s a frefreshing change to see banks actually be careful but Nordea took it to an extreme.

If you have any particular questions sure give me a PM and can see if can help!

Hey BadMonkey......really sorry for the lack of reply. Not been on here for quite sometime as workin the UK keeps me far too busy.

Thanks for your input and experiences. It certainly is useful hearing it's not an easy ride. Unlike you we are not yet sorted and as such do not yet have a mortgage. To be fair though it's only due to lack of time on our end rather than anything negative. Being a homeowner in the UK and having a tip top credit rating all my life I've no problem getting mortgates for UK property. It just seems to tough to be able to sort anything for abroad. A lot of banks in the UK just say a straight no to Poland (even HSBC who have Polish Branches).

That being said this last couple of weeks we've been picking up the search again. Spoke to one company in the UK (Connect Overseas) but they've since told me that they no longer offer mortgages for Poland as their primary Polish Bank (PKO) have stopped doing mortgages and that Connect Overseas no longer have any Polish speaking employees.

So back to the drawing board I think as PKO were my next option. Has anyone had any luck with anyone else. It may be that we have to take the mortgage out in Zloty's but I'm not overly happy to do that as both my wife and I currently earn in GBP. That being said, we are wanting to move to Poland in the next couple of years so the risk would be minimal.

Does anyone have any other thoughts or experiences they can share on this that may help the wife and I out? Appreciate any help and advice folks can give us.

Thanks in advance folks.

Can you not simply increase the mortgage you have on your UK house and buy your Polish property with cold hard cash?

Hi Harry, thanks for your reply - I did think about that but unfortunately don't yet have enough equity built up in my UK property to cover the entire cost of a Polish property.

Banks have cut back on this but santander might be worth a call.

Really? Have you had joy with them in the past at all? Will check them out when I get a spare mo and update you all accordingly.

We are in a similar situaton as in we both live and work in the UK. We have used a finance broker to help with a mortgage application, this has been very time consuming and frustrating at times.

In total it has taken 9 months since agreeing on buying a property.
The translation costs have been around 40,000PLN. As mentioned earlier the documents we supplied such as bank statements etc. have a limited life of 60 days before they request new ones.

The most frustrating was they insisted we had our credit card limits reduced to 1000GBP each.
We only have a mortgage for tax reasons as advised by our accountants, it will be payed off in full after the 4 years minimum agreement as required by the bank.

The interest rate is 4.7%
It is our understanding the only bank that still deals with 'foreigners' is Getin Bank. They also insist that you use their own house insurance which is VERY expensive.

If it was not for the tax implications we would on reflection just purchased the property outright 9 months ago.

On a GBP mortgage?

That's pretty much theft - mine is a shade over 4% on a PLN mortgage .

No the mortgage will be in PLN. I guess they can charge what they want as they have no competition.
If it was a GBP mortgage it would be around 2.7% but none want to lend for the Polish market.

Hey mcm1. Thanks for your reply. Sounding like a right ball ache.

You mention translations costs of 40,000 zl (£8,000). Was this for the banks purposes or something that you needed personally? Reason being my wife being Polish is fluent as it is her 1st language. So translations for the wife and I are not required. However when we got married we had to have an official translation done of some documentation which had to be paid for so just wondering if this is the same sort of thing?

Thanks for all your help!

The translation costs were purely for the bank. I have no idea why they drag there heels for so long.We have Polish relatives who speak/ understand English so in a similar situation as you perhaps.

I have just been reminded that the first 'official translator' that we used was absolute garbage so perhaps take about 5000PLN off that costing.
We since use a translator that we have absolute trust in that was reccomended by our lawyer in Poland locally to where we intend to retire.

The bank have required every 60 days the previous 6 months bank statements from our UK banks..every time translated in full, same for any c/card statements and credit reports.

No, Santander was just a hunch as they took over the WBK business which did used to give mortgages to freigners.

Mcm'S info sounds more up to date, but must be a hell of a tax break if its worth spending 40k on admin

Damn......still not getting anywhere with this. Maybe the best option would be to move to Poland, sort a job and rent a place in the short term before doing it all in Polish. The end game is to move here anyway. What are Polish mortgages like in terms of the amount you can borrow? In the UK you can borrow around 4 times what you earn in a year but I'm hearing from Polish friends that this is completely unheard of in Poland. Can anyone confirm whether or not this is accurate?

BTW.....Merry Christmas Everyone :)

Congratulations on being foresighted enough to have a specialism that's in-demand in Poland. It's otherwise very hard to find work unless you can speak Polish as well as English and have a specialist skill in demand, plus another language on top is often a bonus (ie French, Spanish, Korean).

(Those people who come to Poland to teach English and then get a mortgage based on that have a very difficult time of it.)

Well currently working as an IT programme manager overseeing all projects for a £1 billion company in the UK but would be happy to step back down into project management if that's what it takes. So hopefully it's a skill that will see me into a half decent job. If not.....I won't move until I can speak Polish. Just makes buying property damn tricky.

I will PM you with a link or two but not sure you need it, or you might already know what's what. I hope it works out and you enjoy a happy time in PL.