Mortgage help in irish citizenship application

Hi everyone,

I have been hearing recently that a house mortgage would help me getting my irish citizenship application processed quickly. How true is that? Can anyone shed light on this please?

I think it's the other way around: having the citizenship (may) makes it easier to get a mortgage and access more offers.

I would like to have a reply from Litterr. I appreciate if you can share some information.

Yes I did have a mortgage when I applied for citizenship, but I can’t see how these two are related. I can’t imagine how a staff at the citizenship office would satisfyingly nod their head when they see a person with a large number of debt.

The opposite is kinda true though. One of the main banks here (name starting with the letter K) told me that they place a minimum salary requirement of 90K for Stamp 4 holders, while there is no limitation whatsoever for EU passport holders, which is simply absurd and discriminatory.

ChristinaLeary wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 07, 2020 6:16 pm

Hi everyone,

I have been hearing recently that a house mortgage would help me getting my irish citizenship application processed quickly. How true is that? Can anyone shed light on this please?

Having mortgage doesn't give your applicatoin any preference. It will be processed in the order it was received.

The opposite is kinda true though. One of the main banks here (name starting with the letter K) told me that they place a minimum salary requirement of 90K for Stamp 4 holders, while there is no limitation whatsoever for EU passport holders, which is simply absurd and discriminatory.

I spoke with a broker the other day. Each lender have its own risk profile. Some may even specialise on people with past adverse credit history / delinquency but they charge much higher interests for their credits. Other, focus only on people with low risk and in return offer better rates.

Being foreign national without permanent residence (or without citizenship for some) is associated with higher risk as some lender may perceive it that the person is more likely to leave the country. It's just statistical. They don't look each person but a but characteristics into a database and create global profiles based on many cases.

But eventually, this won't help with citizenship.

Zero evidence and this is how rumours start

Hi Litterr,

Thanks for the reply. So the person said that if you have a mortgage , the irish citienship processing staff would see you potentially living in ireland and basing your life in ireland due to a mortgage on the house, whereas for other cases, they will be like he may leave the country sooner or later and hence people on mortgage get their application processed faster.

Do you think this makes sense based on your information?

Many Thanks

Sorry but that sounds like complete nonsense.

ChristinaLeary wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 09, 2020 2:38 pm

So the person said that if you have a mortgage , the irish citienship processing staff would see you potentially living in ireland and basing your life in ireland due to a mortgage on the house, whereas for other cases, they will be like he may leave the country sooner or later and hence people on mortgage get their application processed faster.

Having house does not prevent anybody from leaving the country Houses can can be sold or rented out. This is a misinformation.

There is no income requirement criteria difference between Irish citizen or stamp
4 or stamp 1 critical services wp. I am a mortgage adviser

nojoyfrominis wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 09, 2020 9:57 pm

There is no income requirement criteria difference between Irish citizen or stamp
4 or stamp 1 critical services wp. I am a mortgage adviser

Oh there is. The fact your employer didn’t have it doesn’t mean other banks don’t have the same rule.

I got the approval in principle from KBC as they had the lowest variable rate at the time. I went through the pain of getting all documents stamped and certified, sat in their branch beside Temple Bar with a mortgage advisor, only to be told that non-EU applicants must have 90K salary. This was in 2016.

I then complained to their head office and got a reply from the branch’s mortgage executive after a whole year:

Dear xxx,

This is a response to a query you raised online recently. These requirements have not changed and we would be unable to assist you with a Mortgage application if you were not meeting these requirements at present.

I then received a phone call from the same person telling me that at least half of the institutions have similar requirements. Whether that is an exaggeration, I don’t know, as the second bank I went for (AIB) offered me the mortgage without any issue.