A note on the financial and tax content below: the stamp duty and tax information in this guide reflects publicly available HMRC guidance current as of mid-2026. Tax rules change, and individual circumstances vary considerably — this guide is not a substitute for independent tax and legal advice specific to your situation, and CBG is not a tax adviser. Treat this as the grounding to ask the right questions, not as a final answer.

If you've bought property before in another country and assumed the UK process would feel broadly familiar, you've probably already noticed it doesn't. Not because anyone's being difficult, and not because the system is designed to be opaque — but because almost everything written about buying property in England assumes a buyer who already lives here, already has a UK financial footprint, and already understands the unwritten rhythm of how a purchase moves from an accepted offer to actually getting the keys.

This guide is written for the buyer that assumption leaves out.

DOES BUYING PROPERTY AFFECT YOUR VISA OR IMMIGRATION STATUS?

This is worth addressing directly and early, because it's one of the most common points of confusion: owning property in the UK does not, by itself, grant any right to live in, work in, or remain in the UK. There is no general "buy a home, get residency" route in the current UK system. Your ability to live here is governed entirely by your immigration status, separately from anything you own. If residency or visa planning is part of your decision to buy, that's a conversation for an immigration solicitor specifically — not a property solicitor, and not us. The two are entirely separate processes that happen to sometimes overlap in timing.

THE CREDIT HISTORY PROBLEM

UK mortgage lenders lean heavily on UK credit history when assessing an application — something you likely don't have, no matter how strong your financial standing is at home. This doesn't mean you can't get a mortgage. It means:

• You'll typically need a larger deposit than a UK-resident buyer would for the same property — often 25–40% rather than the 10–15% a first-time UK buyer might put down.

• Specialist lenders who work specifically with international or expat applicants will usually get you further than a generalist high-street bank, which may decline outright over a thin UK credit file rather than assess you properly.

• Proof of income and source of funds documentation will likely be more extensive than what a UK-resident buyer is asked for — this is standard, not a sign you're being treated with suspicion.

STAMP DUTY: THE 2% NON-RESIDENT SURCGARGE

If you're classed as a non-UK resident at the point of completion, you'll pay a 2% surcharge on top of standard Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) rates on any residential property purchase in England over £40,000. This has applied since April 2021 and remains in place as of this guide.

A few specifics worth knowing:

• Residency for this purpose has nothing to do with your visa, nationality, or immigration status. It's a specific SDLT test: broadly, whether you've spent at least 183 days in the UK in the 12 months before your purchase completes. You can hold a British passport and still be classed as non-resident for this surcharge if you haven't spent enough time in the country; equally, you can hold no UK immigration status at all and still qualify as resident if you have.

• The surcharge applies to the whole property price, not just a portion of it, and stacks on top of any other applicable surcharge (for example, if the property is a second home).

• You may be able to reclaim the 2% later if you go on to spend 183 days in the UK within a set window after the purchase — but this needs to be handled correctly with HMRC, and it's exactly the kind of detail worth confirming with your solicitor or an independent tax adviser rather than assuming.

As a rough sense of scale: standard SDLT on a £1,000,000 property in England currently works out to roughly £41,250. The 2% non-resident surcharge would add approximately £20,000 on top of that. These figures move if the property price, band thresholds, or your specific circumstances differ — always get an exact calculation from your solicitor before budgeting.

CURRENCY AND TIMING

Exchange rate movement between agreeing a price and actually transferring funds can meaningfully change what a property costs you in your home currency, particularly on larger sums, over a process that — as covered below — can easily run several months. A specialist currency transfer service, rather than your everyday bank, is worth investigating early. Some let you lock in a rate in advance of completion, which removes a genuine source of financial uncertainty from a process that already has enough moving parts.

ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING CHECKS WILL LIKELY TAKE LONGER FOR YOU

UK solicitors are legally required to carry out anti-money laundering (AML) checks on every buyer, verifying identity and the source of funds. For a UK-resident buyer with a UK bank account and a straightforward income history, this is usually quick. For an international buyer — particularly one with funds coming from multiple countries, in a foreign currency, or from a source that takes longer to document (a business sale, an inheritance, funds accumulated over years abroad) — this step can take meaningfully longer, sometimes several weeks.

This isn't a reflection on you, and it isn't optional or something a solicitor can skip to be helpful. Being told this upfront and asked to prepare documentation early is a sign of a solicitor who works with international clients properly. Being surprised by it three weeks before you'd hoped to complete is a sign of one who didn't think to warn you.

THE TIME DIFFERENCE NOBODY ACCOUNTS FOR

If you're buying from a significantly different time zone, a "same day" response from a UK-based advisor might land at 3am your time, or a query you sent at what felt like a reasonable hour might sit unanswered for a working day simply because your morning is their night. This isn't a sign anything has gone wrong — but without someone telling you that upfront, it's easy to assume it is, especially layered on top of everything else in this guide that's already unfamiliar.

What actually helps is advisors who set expectations explicitly around time zones and response windows from the outset, rather than leaving you to work it out through anxious guessing at 2am. This is a small thing to ask for in your first call with any advisor — and a reasonable one to expect an answer to.

The practical list above is the part that gets written down. There's another layer that rarely does, because it's harder to admit to, even to yourself.

The fear of being taken advantage of because you're not from here. Not because anyone's told you this will happen, but because you have no local reference point for what a fair price, a fair fee, or a normal delay actually looks like — and that uncertainty is fertile ground for worry, whether or not anyone's actually being dishonest with you.

The fear of making an expensive, visible mistake far from the people who'd normally reassure you. At home, you'd call a friend who bought recently, or a parent who's seen it before. Here, you might not have that person, and the isolation of a big financial decision without a familiar sounding board is its own quiet weight.

The fear that the pace of things is wrong, and you simply don't know it. Every UK buyer has some instinct for what "normal" looks like, built from friends' experiences or their own past purchases. You don't have that instinct yet, which means you can't easily tell the difference between an ordinary quiet week and a genuine problem — so everything ambiguous defaults to worry.

The fear that you'll be spoken to differently — more slowly, less thoroughly, with less patience — because of an accent, a time zone, or simply being new to the system. This fear often goes unspoken because naming it feels like an accusation nobody's earned yet. But it's a real and common experience among international buyers, and it's worth acknowledging rather than pretending it doesn't factor into how safe this whole process feels.

None of these fears mean anything is wrong with your purchase, or with you for having them. They're a rational response to making a six or seven-figure decision inside a system you didn't grow up watching other people navigate.

1. Get a sense of your borrowing position before you fall in love with anywhere. Speak to a mortgage broker who specifically handles international or expat applicants, and get an honest read on what you can realistically borrow, given your credit history and deposit. This conversation should happen before you start seriously viewing, not after.

2. Instruct a solicitor early, even before you've found a property. In England, unlike some countries, a solicitor isn't just for the final paperwork — they're involved from the offer stage onward, and starting that relationship early means less scrambling later, especially given the AML timeline above.

3. View properties — virtually where needed, in person where possible. Virtual viewings are entirely normal for international buyers and no estate agent worth working with will treat this as an inconvenience. That said, a trip to view shortlisted properties in person before committing is worth the cost of the flight, if at all possible — video calls miss things a walk down the street won't.

4. Make an offer, then move quickly on the practical steps. Once an offer is accepted, your mortgage broker moves toward a formal offer, your solicitor begins searches and enquiries, and — if you haven't already — this is the point to lock in currency arrangements and make sure your AML documentation is ready to go rather than assembled reactively when requested.

5. Survey, exchange, complete. A survey (even where not strictly required by your lender) is worth commissioning independently. Exchange of contracts is the legally binding commitment — from this point, backing out has real financial consequences. Completion, typically one to four weeks later, is when ownership and keys actually transfer.

THE PROFESSIONALS YOU'LL ACTUALLY NEED

• A mortgage broker with genuine international/expat experience — not just a generalist who's happy to try. Ask directly how many international applications they've placed in the last year.

• A solicitor (conveyancer) who has handled international buyers before, understands AML timelines for overseas funds, and will explain exchange and completion as two distinct stages rather than assuming you already know the difference.

• An estate agent comfortable running virtual viewings properly and communicating across time zones without treating either as an inconvenience.

• A currency specialist, separate from your everyday bank, particularly if you're transferring a significant sum or want to manage exchange rate exposure across a multi-month process.

• An independent tax adviser, ideally one with cross-border experience covering both the UK and your home country — this matters especially if your home country taxes worldwide income or has its own reporting requirements about foreign property ownership.

• A surveyor, appointed independently of your mortgage lender's own valuation, to get a genuinely independent view of the property's condition.

HOW LONG THIS ACTUALLY TAKES

For a UK-resident buyer, the realistic range from an accepted offer to completion is 12 to 20 weeks, with more complex transactions or long chains sometimes stretching to six months or beyond. As an international buyer, it's sensible to budget toward the longer end of that range, or slightly beyond it, for a specific reason: the AML and source-of-funds documentation covered earlier can add real time that a UK-resident purchase simply doesn't encounter in the same way.

Within NW London specifically, the boroughs CBG covers — Barnet, Brent, Camden, Harrow, Westminster — each carry slightly different local authority search times, which is one of the more variable and least controllable parts of the timeline. A good solicitor will give you a realistic estimate based on the specific local authority rather than a generic national average.

A realistic international buyer's timeline, in practice: 4–6 weeks for mortgage positioning and property search running in parallel, 2–4 weeks from offer to a formal mortgage offer, 8–14 weeks for conveyancing (allowing extra time for AML on international funds), and 1–4 weeks from exchange to completion. All told, most international buyers should plan for 4 to 6 months from serious search to keys in hand, understanding that a straightforward chain-free purchase can move faster and a complex one can take longer.

WHY NORTH WEST LONDON SPECIFICALLY

NW London has long attracted international buyers for reasons that predate any of this guide: strong transport links into central London, excellent schools, and — in areas like St John's Wood, Swiss Cottage, and Hampstead — an established, multi-generational presence of international communities that makes relocating here feel less like starting from zero. Brent and Harrow in particular have deep, long-standing South Asian and African diaspora communities; Camden and Hampstead have a strong European professional presence; St John's Wood has long been a landing point for Middle Eastern families. None of this means you need to buy where a community matching your own background already exists — but for many international buyers, it's a genuine factor in feeling settled quickly, and worth knowing about as you narrow down where to focus your search.

Everything above is publicly available information, in the sense that a determined person could piece it together from HMRC guidance, mortgage broker websites, and enough forum posts. What's harder to piece together from abroad is which specific solicitor, broker, and estate agent in NW London will actually apply all of this well — who explains AML timelines upfront instead of springing them on you, who's genuinely handled international clients rather than merely being willing to, who sets realistic time-zone expectations instead of leaving you to wonder why nobody's replied.

That's the gap CBG exists to close. Every advisor we introduce to an international buyer is chosen specifically for their track record with clients relocating from abroad — and it's backed by the same guarantee we offer everyone: a clear next step within 5 working days from any advisor we introduce, wherever in the world you're calling from, or we find you someone who will.

The honest bit: you could find a solicitor, broker, and estate agent from abroad entirely on your own — plenty of international buyers do, successfully, every year. What's genuinely difficult to assess from a different country and time zone is which of them will take the time to explain a system you're encountering for the first time, rather than assuming a familiarity you don't have. That's not a matter of competence on their part. It's a matter of who thinks to ask.

If you're relocating to NW London and would rather have all of this explained clearly upfront than discovered the hard way partway through, a free 20-minute Clarity Call is a low-pressure place to start — wherever you're calling from, and whatever time zone you're in.