How To Get A Barrister Mortgage

Securing a barrister mortgage can actually be more challenging than you might expect.

As a highly qualified professional with excellent income growth potential, you'd expect getting a good mortgage would be easy. 

But as a self-employed practitioner with highly variable monthly income and substantial practice costs, it’s not an easy calculation for them to assess what size of mortgage commitment you can reliably service month-by-month.  

The challenge for many barristers is to access the level of mortgage lending that fairly reflects their actual average income and earnings potential.

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Residential and buy-to-let property mortgages for self employed barristers

How much can I borrow with a barrister mortgage?

Barristers buying an investment property

Most-suitable mortgages for barristers

Approaching high street lenders

Using a mortgage broker

Mortgages for self employed barristers - residential and buy-to-let

Mortgage finance will always be available to qualified barristers. The issue may be whether you can borrow enough to purchase at the level you’re looking at and how much your borrowing will cost you.

Without knowledgeable packaging of your application, a lender may err on the side of caution, reducing your borrowing amount and failing to offer the most advantageous professional mortgage rates for either residential or investment mortgages.

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How much can I borrow with a barrister mortgage?

A minimum of 4.5 times income is available to most borrowers. Barristers can expect to access at least 5 times their income, and some lenders will be prepared to go higher than that for members of the Bar - depending on the size of deposit you can offer.

Barristers buying an investment property

Average nationwide rental returns of 4-5% for single-tenancy rental properties make this an attractive investment proposition for high earners (though rental returns are considerably lower in London due to higher real estate prices).

Busy legal professionals who cannot be hands-on landlords may want to pay for more management support.

Multi-occupancy Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) ("share houses" of three or more unrelated tenants), or Large HMOs (five or more unrelated tenants), offer rental returns almost double the rates for single occupancy – chiefly due to reduced rental voids between tenants.

Management costs are higher, and landlords usually pay rates and bills, but more of the costs may be tax-deductible.

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Most-suitable mortgages for barristers

Independent practitioner barristers are not standard mortgage clients.

An experienced mortgage broker can advise whether an alternative to the standard interest-and-capital-repayment mortgage could suit your circumstances better:

Offset mortgage

An offset mortgage could allow you to make lower regular repayments each month while uneven fee earnings are paid into a linked savings account and reduce your interest payments.

Interest-only mortgage

Paying interest-only keeps regular monthly payments low to allow for earnings fluctuations, but you won’t be making inroads into capital repayment and reducing your overall borrowing. Most interest-only mortgages allow for overpayments of up to 10% a year, which could be paid in lump-sums, and a specialist lender may be willing to allow larger annual overpayments.

Approaching high street lenders

As a barrister looking for either residential or investment mortgage lending, approaching a high-street bank or building society directly can prove time-consuming and often frustrating.

Their requirements vary considerably as to proof of income required from barristers for mortgage applications:

• Averaged profits over two, three or five years
• Last year’s profits
• Accountant’s reference
• Accountant’s prediction of future earnings (sometimes dependent on progress into the current financial year)
• 3 months’ bank statements
• Analysis of month-to-month spending

You will want to be assured that the lender you have approached is looking beyond their standard requirements for self-employed contractors and is looking at your income growth potential to offer you the most advantageous rates. Approaching a number of lenders is extremely time-consuming and a major reason why most barristers use an independent mortgage advisor.

If you go directly to a high street lender, the application process won't necessarily take any longer than if a broker handles your application - if you satisfy this lender's criteria and if you supply them with the information they need.

But you may not know if you meet all the criteria until several weeks after you've received an agreement in principle when their underwriter reviews your application.

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Not presenting all the necessary supporting documentation in the required format will delay the process.

And presenting unnecessary additional information can also slow the process if it raises additional questions. And walk-up applicants are largely powerless to investigate the process and do whatever they might to speed it up.

Using a mortgage broker

An experienced mortgage advisor will:

• Identify the most appropriate and cheapest mortgage type and lender for your situation
• Compile all the necessary documentation
• Present your earnings evidence most effectively, and "package" your application to suit the agreed lender’s criteria
• Chase your application through the system

In addition to being aware of all the high street bank mortgage offerings, which will sometimes be available to brokers at slightly more advantageous rates, in recognition of the time saved in processing "packaged" applications, mortgage brokers also have access to specialist lenders and private banks not available to direct approaches from clients.

Specialist lenders can take a "bespoke" view of a client's financial situation and tailor their mortgage offering accordingly.

Barristers have complex incomes for mortgage purposes. They’re also extremely busy. Our advisors are available out of hours for detailed discussions.

James Caldwell, Clifton Private Finance

High-value, low-deposit mortgages for barristers

Some lenders are willing to provide lending up to 95% of the value on substantial properties to members of the legal profession. For mortgages in excess of £1 million, there may be a requirement that over the first five years of the mortgage the lender’s exposure will be reduced by agreed repayments of capital.

Call us at Clifton Private Finance

As a specialist property finance broker, we have a lot of experience in arranging mortgage finance for barristers.

We have strong professional relationships with private banks, specialist lenders, family offices and wealth managers and can arrange the most appropriate lending to suit your needs.

We understand that your time is valuable. When you contact us, we can arrange a call-back at any time that will suit you for a detailed discussion with one of our brokers.

Call us at Clifton Private Finance to find out what we can do for you:

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Our barrister mortgage service

Read our blog on what proof of income you need for your mortgage application

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