Islamic mortgages on a visa
Yes, some UK visa holders can qualify. What there is not is a single visa rule: the three providers publish three different kinds of criteria, so your visa can affect whether you qualify, how much deposit you need, or both, depending on which provider you approach.
This guide compares Gatehouse Bank, StrideUp and Offa, the three mainstream providers open to UK residents. The register tracks specialist and international propositions separately, and they are not covered here.
- Gatehouse BankEngland and Wales
- Links status and remaining visa term to the maximum finance-to-value. Qualifying applicants with at least 12 months remaining can reach 90%, and qualifying applicants with indefinite leave to remain can reach 95% on a purchase. Below six months remaining its own current sources conflict, so we do not treat that as confirmed. Separate residence, income and underwriting conditions can also apply.
- StrideUpEngland only
- Permanent right to reside, or a visa with at least one year remaining. Its own home purchase plan sources publish two different residency periods, two years in three places and 12 or 24 months by occupation in the article written for visa applicants, so we do not state one. It does publish one specific joint case: British or ILR plus a Spousal Visa, both treated as having permanent rights to reside.
- OffaEngland and Wales
- The only one of the three publishing a route-by-route list: ten named statuses and routes, with the Family Visa expressly capped at 65%. We found no minimum remaining visa term stated in that guide.
Three providers, three different kinds of rule
Immigration status is not handled the same way by each provider, and the differences are structural rather than a matter of degree. Gatehouse Bank uses status partly to determine the maximum finance-to-value available. StrideUp publishes rules about permanent residence, remaining visa term and time lived in the UK. Offa publishes a list of acceptable statuses and visa types.
These are underwriting criteria rather than one market-wide visa rule. The criteria documents relied on here state the thresholds without giving an underwriting rationale for them, and we are not going to supply one: what a criterion is can be sourced, why a lender chose it cannot.
So the useful question is not whether a provider takes visa holders. It is which provider's published criteria your situation actually fits, and what that costs you. Our deposit guide sets out what each tier costs.
At Gatehouse, your status can cap the tier you reach
Gatehouse Bank publishes this in two criteria guides, both effective , and not as a single table. Read together, they form a ladder.
| Highest purchase finance | Implied contribution | Highest tier reached by this status |
|---|---|---|
| 95% | 5% |
First-time buyers included at this tier. |
| 90% | 10% |
First-time buyers included at this tier. |
| 80% | 20% |
Sources differ, see below The other tiers' statuses can also use products at this level; this row records the highest tier reached by a status that does not meet the conditions above. |
Read the rows as ceilings reached, not ceilings imposed. Each row records the highest finance-to-value tier the published criteria establish for that status. An applicant who qualifies for a higher tier can of course take a lower-tier product. The rows are not a list of who is confined to that level. The 95% tier is published for purchase only. Refinancing tops out at 90% regardless of status, which the remortgage guide covers. See the remortgage guide for the refinance position.
What the gap costs
A qualifying foreign national with at least 12 months left on a UK visa can reach 90%. A qualifying applicant with indefinite leave to remain can reach 95% on a purchase. On a £300,000 purchase, those 5 percentage points are £15,000 of additional deposit.
Immigration status is not the only thing that sets a maximum. The higher-tier guide caps new-build flats at 90% regardless of status, and finance amount, property type, affordability and underwriting all bear on it too.
The bottom rung is where Gatehouse's own sources stop agreeing. The criteria guide for finance up to 80% accepts a valid UK visa regardless of term, and asks for additional information where fewer than six months remain. The consumer HPP eligibility page states: you must be permanent resident of the UK or have at least 6 months remaining on your visa. We have not established whether the detailed guide is an exception to the summary, whether one is stale, or how the two are meant to interact. We do not treat a visa with under six months remaining as confirmed eligible. Whichever governs, it does not remove the guide's other requirements, which for the employed cases it describes include six months of consecutive UK residence, 12 months of continuous employment history and a signed UK contract of employment. Those employment requirements are published for the employed foreign-national and pre-settled cases the criteria describe. The same guides also advertise the product for self-employed applicants, and we have not established how an employment-history and signed-contract requirement is applied to a self-employed visa holder. That is recorded as an open question rather than resolved in either direction.
Home Purchase Plan Criteria, finance up to 80% finance-to-value, effective 5 August 2026 · Home Purchase Plan Criteria, finance above 80% finance-to-value, effective 5 August 2026 · Home Purchase Plan eligibility, consumer channel, read .
Check every published criterion against your answers, visa included
How long you must have lived in the UK
This can be a decisive criterion for a recent arrival, and it is also where one provider's own sources stop agreeing with each other.
- Gatehouse BankEngland and Wales
- Resident in the UK for the last six months consecutively at the time of application, together with twelve months of continuous employment history, of which the last six months must be in the UK, and a signed UK contract of employment. These apply to foreign nationals without indefinite leave to remain, and EEA or EU nationals with pre-settled status.
- OffaEngland and Wales
- Residency is stated as UK residency and expats in selected locations. No minimum period of UK residence is stated in the guide. Its guide states the region as England and Wales only.
StrideUp's own sources publish two different periods
Not settled. Three sources publish a two-year period; a fourth, written specifically for applicants on a visa, publishes 12 or 24 months depending on occupation. All four are live, first-party home purchase plan sources.
| Source | Residency position | How it reads |
|---|---|---|
| Consumer eligibility pageNo date published on the page | "You've lived in the UK for at least two years, or you're applying with someone who has." | The joint route is stated as a flat alternative. |
| Intermediary criteriaNo date published on the page | "All applicants must have been a UK resident for the last 2 years. For a joint application where one applicant has not been resident for the required time, the application may still be considered with additional criteria." | The joint route is discretionary and conditional, not automatic. |
| Help centre10 May 2023 | "We usually need at least 2 years of UK residency before being able to consider your application. Where one applicant on a joint application lacks it and the other meets it, the provider may be able to help, subject to extra criteria." | "Usually" and "may be able to help" again describe discretion rather than an entitlement. |
| Help centre, applicants on a visa16 August 2024 | "At the point of full application, we need to see either 12 months residency in the UK or 24 months residency in the UK depending on your occupation." | A different period entirely, and the only source that ties the period to occupation. It does not name which occupations get 12 months. |
We have not established which governs a particular visa case, which occupations attract the 12-month period, or how the visa-specific article is intended to interact with the intermediary criteria. We hold all four rather than selecting the tidiest.
All four are live now. Two carry a publication date and two do not, and the two dated ones are more than a year apart. Older does not mean superseded, and we do not treat it as such; the dates are shown because a disagreement between documents of different vintages is a different thing from a disagreement between documents published together.
One joint case it does answer specifically
Where one applicant is British or has indefinite leave to remain and the other is on a Spousal Visa, both applicants are treated as having permanent rights to reside. That is a specific published outcome, not the general joint-applicant discretion. It is stated, not inferred, and it is stronger than the case-by-case wording elsewhere.
Where the disagreement actually bites
A disputed criterion does not disagree at every value. Localising the uncertainty is more useful to a reader than stamping the whole rule disputed.
- 24 months or more
- satisfies all Meets every published residence-duration statement we found. Three sources ask for two years and the fourth asks for 12 or 24 depending on occupation, so 24 satisfies either branch of it. That settles the duration criterion only; visa validity, affordability, credit and property criteria all still apply.
- 12 to 23 months
- unresolved The genuinely unresolved band. The visa-specific article suggests some occupations can be considered at 12 months, while three other sources still publish a two-year position, and no source names the occupations.
- Under 12 months
- no route established None of the four publishes a standard solo route on residence duration below 12 months. The specific joint case below can change that position.
The practical reading
Gatehouse Bank publishes a six-month UK-residence minimum for the foreign-national and pre-settled cases its criteria cover, alongside employment requirements that are not trivial. StrideUp does not publish one consistent period, so an applicant with 12 to 23 months here should not be treated as automatically outside its criteria. At 24 months or more the duration question is common ground across all four sources, which is worth knowing before you go asking which one governs.
StrideUp Home Purchase Plan eligibility, consumer channel · StrideUp HPP Criteria Guide, intermediary channel · Help centre, minimum period of UK residency · Help centre, residency requirements for an applicant on a visa, read .
Applying with someone whose status is different
A common assumption is that a settled partner carries the application. Gatehouse Bank publishes the opposite rule, and publishes it plainly: where applicants are from different jurisdictions or have a different residency status, the application is processed using the lower finance-to-value product. This applies to the green products too.
So a couple where one holds indefinite leave to remain and the other holds a visa with 18 months left is assessed at the visa holder's tier, not the settled applicant's. Plan the deposit around the more restricted status.
StrideUp publishes a joint-application route on a different dimension: its residency period rather than its finance-to-value. It gives one case a specific published outcome rather than a discretion. Where one applicant is British or has indefinite leave to remain and the other is on a Spousal Visa, both applicants are treated as having permanent rights to reside. For other cases where one applicant falls short of the residence period, its intermediary criteria describes discretionary consideration subject to additional criteria it does not publish.
None of that is the opposite of the Gatehouse rule. The two providers are answering different questions: one about which tier a mixed-status pair lands on, the other about whether a short-residency applicant can be considered at all.
Offa publishes the named routes
Offa publishes the most specific immigration criteria of the three, in its home purchase plan criteria guide. Its requirement is stated first: "Applicants must have indefinite leave to enter or remain in the UK, or have an acceptable visa type." Then it names them.
These are the provider's own labels. We reproduce the route names as Offa's guide gives them and have not translated older provider terminology into current Home Office route names. Which current route your visa falls under is a question for the Home Office guidance or an immigration adviser, not for us.
- EU Settlement Scheme, pre-settled status
- EU Settlement Scheme, settled status
- EU Settlement Scheme, family permit
- EU Settlement Scheme, applied and awaiting decision
- Family Visa Capped at 65% finance-to-value
- Skilled Worker Visa
- UK Ancestry Visa
- Health and Care Worker Visa
- British National (Overseas) Visa
- Intra-company Transfer Visa
Why this matters more than a ladder
Offa is the only one of the three whose home purchase plan guide gives a route-by-route named list. Gatehouse and StrideUp are not silent on visa acceptability; they publish broader tests, a valid UK visa in Gatehouse's case and permanent rights to reside or a visa with at least a year remaining in StrideUp's. So the difference is the shape of the answer, not whether there is one. One route on the list also carries its own ceiling rather than a yes or no: the Family Visa, capped at 65%.
We found no minimum remaining visa term stated in this guide. Offa's FAQ material, alongside its buy-to-let residency criteria, does state a 12-month remaining-visa requirement. Because the home purchase plan guide does not state that threshold, we do not carry it across.
Home Purchase Plan Criteria Guide, intermediary channel. Not used for the home purchase plan: Offa FAQs, covering buy-to-let residency and visa criteria among other topics. Both read .
Three different rulebooks, not one hierarchy
All three mainstream providers publish immigration criteria for the home purchase plan. What they do not do is answer the same question, which is why a single comparison table would mislead.
| Provider | Shape of the rule | What it publishes |
|---|---|---|
| Gatehouse Bank | Status and remaining visa term are linked to the maximum finance-to-value. | Immigration status can cap the finance-to-value tier available to you. |
| StrideUp | A status rule plus a residency period that its own HPP sources do not state consistently. | Permanent right to reside, or a visa with at least one year remaining. Its HPP sources publish two different residency periods, so we do not state one. |
| Offa | A named list of acceptable immigration routes, with one route carrying its own finance-to-value cap. | The only one of the three publishing a route-by-route list: ten named statuses and routes, with the Family Visa capped at 65%. |
At Gatehouse Bank, a British passport does not by itself decide the range
This one catches people out, and it is published rather than inferred. Applicants who hold British passports but do not have an automatic right to live and work in the UK are eligible only for the international product range, not the UK resident range. The guide points to the government's list of the types of British nationality.
For this routing rule the distinction that matters is whether the passport holder has the automatic right to live and work in the UK, not the document itself. British nationality comes in several forms and not all of them carry that right, so an applicant holding a British passport can still be routed to the international range, at its ceiling and its pricing, rather than the UK resident range. That is a Gatehouse routing rule. We did not find an equivalent test in the criteria sources reviewed for this page.
One more Gatehouse Bank requirement worth knowing. Gatehouse also requires that all its customers be able to read, speak and understand English to a level at which they are fully aware of the obligations they are entering into. We did not find an equivalent published requirement in the other two providers' sources reviewed here. We have not established an equivalent published requirement at the other two.
What we could not verify
- Which residency period governs a StrideUp visa applicant with 12 to 23 months in the UK. At 24 months or more all four of its live sources are satisfied. Below that, the visa-specific article allows 12 months for some occupations without naming them, while three other sources publish two years.
- Which Gatehouse Bank position governs a visa with under six months left. Its detailed up-to-80% guide accepts a valid visa regardless of term; its consumer eligibility page requires at least six months remaining. We have not established the relationship between them.
- StrideUp's general joint-residency exception, outside the spouse-visa case it does publish. The British or ILR plus Spousal Visa outcome is stated. For other short-residency joint cases the additional criteria are not published, and the consumer and intermediary wording differ on how discretionary the route is.
- How Gatehouse Bank applies its visa criteria to self-employed applicants. Both criteria guides advertise the product for self-employed applicants, while the additional requirements for foreign nationals without indefinite leave to remain include 12 months of continuous employment history and a signed UK contract of employment.
Where the 12-month number comes from
StrideUp publishes a 12-month residency figure in more than one product family, so it is worth being precise about which one this page can use. It appears in StrideUp's own home purchase plan help material, so it is not an import from another product. What the home purchase plan article does not do is say which occupations attract it.
StrideUp's buy-to-let criteria publishes the same 24-month and 12-month split, and adds what the HPP article does not: the 12-month group is applicants within professions and occupations on the government's Skilled Worker and Visa list.
The 12 or 24 month split is published for the home purchase plan in its own right, so it is not a cross-product import. What we do not import is the buy-to-let occupation list as the definition of the HPP occupation group, because the HPP article does not say so.
This is a narrower rejection than it looks. We are not rejecting the number, which is published for this product. We are declining to borrow the buy-to-let definition of who qualifies for it, because a provider can run the same threshold with different qualifying groups across two products, and this one has not said otherwise.
StrideUp buy-to-let criteria, read .
Where to start
Start with the shape of the rule rather than the rate. If you want to know whether your immigration route is explicitly named, Offa is the only one of the three that publishes that kind of list. If your circumstances fit Gatehouse Bank's published status categories, its tiers show how that status can affect the minimum deposit required. And check the residence requirements early, because they can rule a provider out regardless of your deposit.
One limit on our checker. It tests deposit tier, property nation and type, customer scope, age and finance limits. It does not model visa term or time lived in the UK, so it cannot answer the questions on this page. Use it for everything else, and take the visa question to the provider.
Check the other published criteria What each tier costs Ask an adviser your question
Tell us what the published data could not answer
Everything above comes from what providers publish. Whether a provider will actually take you depends on affordability, credit history and the property itself, and on criteria nobody prints. Tell us what you are stuck on and we will come back to you.
Visa criteria are the least consistently published rules in this market, and some of the gaps above are unresolved in the providers’ own documents.
Common questions
- Can you get an Islamic mortgage on a visa in the UK?
- Yes, where your status meets what the provider publishes, and the three providers publish three different kinds of rule. Gatehouse Bank links immigration status and remaining visa term to the maximum finance-to-value. StrideUp accepts foreign nationals with permanent rights to reside or a visa with at least one year remaining, though its own sources give two different UK-residency periods. Offa publishes a named list of acceptable routes, including Skilled Worker, UK Ancestry, Health and Care Worker and British National (Overseas), with the Family Visa capped at 65% finance-to-value.
- Do you need indefinite leave to remain for an Islamic mortgage?
- Not everywhere, and where it is not required it can still affect how much you can finance. At Gatehouse, a qualifying applicant with indefinite leave to remain can reach 95% finance-to-value on a purchase, and a qualifying foreign national with at least 12 months left on a UK visa can reach 90%. Below that its sources differ: the detailed up-to-80% guide accepts a valid visa regardless of term, while its consumer eligibility page requires at least six months remaining, so we do not treat a shorter visa as confirmed eligible. StrideUp accepts permanent rights to reside or a visa with at least one year remaining. Offa requires indefinite leave to enter or remain, or one of its ten named routes.
- How long do you have to have lived in the UK?
- It differs by provider, and one provider does not answer it consistently. Gatehouse requires foreign nationals without indefinite leave to remain to have been resident in the UK for the last six months consecutively. StrideUp publishes two years in three places, and 12 or 24 months depending on occupation in the article written for applicants on a visa, so we do not reduce it to one minimum. Offa states residency as UK residency and expats in selected locations, without a minimum period.
- What if one applicant is on a visa and the other is a UK national?
- It depends which provider and which question. Gatehouse publishes that where applicants are from different jurisdictions or have a different residency status, the application is processed using the lower finance-to-value product, so the more restricted status governs. StrideUp publishes a specific outcome for one case: where one applicant is British or has indefinite leave to remain and the other is on a Spousal Visa, both are treated as having permanent rights to reside. For other short-residency joint cases it describes a discretion rather than an entitlement.