A UK mortgage on a Graduate visa — what's possible and what lenders look at.

Yes, but the lender pool is narrower than for Skilled Worker visa holders and the criteria are specific. Concrete thresholds:

• Deposit (10% / 90% LTV): available from a very small number of specialist lenders, only where the applicant is in permanent employment, earning above the Skilled Worker salary threshold for their role and has an established (if thin) UK credit file. This is the narrowest tier — fewer lenders offer it for Graduate visa than for Skilled Worker.
• Deposit (15–25%): opens a broader specialist panel. At 25%, some lenders who would normally require ILR or Skilled Worker status will consider a Graduate visa holder in permanent employment.
• Employment type: permanent employment is strongly preferred. Fixed-term contracts are considered by some lenders but the term must be substantially longer than the mortgage's initial fixed period. Self-employment on a Graduate visa is assessed case by case and the lender pool is very limited.
• Visa remaining time: lenders want to see meaningful time remaining on the Graduate visa — typically at least 12 months, though two years is more comfortable. The Graduate visa is granted for two years (three years for PhD graduates), so a recently arrived Graduate visa holder will generally have enough remaining time; an applicant near expiry without a Skilled Worker sponsorship in progress will find the panel very narrow.
• Transitioning to Skilled Worker: if you have a Certificate of Sponsorship confirmed and are switching, some lenders will assess on the basis of the incoming Skilled Worker status — this can open more of the market while you are still formally on the Graduate visa.
• UK credit history: a clean, established UK file — even a thin one from your student years — is more valuable here than for Skilled Worker applications, because the lender cannot use the employer sponsor licence as a proxy for stability.

See also our guides on Skilled Worker visa mortgages and mortgages without ILR for the broader context on what's possible at each stage.

The Skilled Worker visa gives lenders something the Graduate visa does not: an employer sponsor licence. That licence is a regulated, publicly searchable credential issued to the sponsoring employer by the Home Office, and it signals — to lenders — that the employer has been vetted, that the employment relationship is formal and tied, and that the applicant's income is likely to continue for the duration of their leave. Lenders use sponsor licence status as an additional stability signal alongside salary, contract type and credit profile.

The Graduate visa is unsponsored — the holder can work for any employer, in any role, at any salary. That flexibility is the point of the visa, but it removes the sponsor licence signal from the lender's assessment framework. Lenders who consider Graduate visa holders instead look harder at: the employment contract itself (permanent vs fixed-term), the salary relative to sector norms, the length of UK employment history and the quality of the UK credit file.

The practical consequence: a Graduate visa holder with 18 months of permanent employment at a well-known employer, a clean UK credit file and a 20% deposit is in a stronger position than the visa type alone suggests. A newly graduated applicant in their first month of employment, on a fixed-term contract, with a thin credit file is in a materially weaker position regardless of income. The difference between these two profiles — and which lenders will consider each — is what the initial conversation with us is about.

See also: Health and Care visa mortgages, Spouse visa mortgages and EU citizen mortgages in the UK.