CIS First Time Buyer Joint Mortgage

Podcast approved by The Openwork Partnership on 09/06/2025.

How do joint mortgages work for first time CIS buyers?

If you’re trying to get a joint mortgage and you’re a CIS worker,that’s a very normal situation. Both borrowers don’t need to be paid through the CIS scheme.

If you want the benefit of using CIS income, only one of you needs to be paid through CIS. The other person could be a butcher, baker or a candlestick maker – it doesn’t matter. We can use both incomes and, as we’ve said on previous podcasts, we can use the gross CIS income on your payslips.

For the person paid through the CIS scheme, we need at least three months’ payslips. Some mortgage lenders will ask for 12 months. If the second borrower is standard self-employed, not CIS, we’d look at their last two years of tax calculations. We normally work off the average – or the latest if it’s a little bit lower. 

If they’re employed, we’d need the last three months’ payslips. We put both those incomes into the pot and see what the mortgage lender can give us based on those incomes.

My partner is a CIS worker and First Time Buyer but I’m not – what are our options?

If your partner is a CIS worker but you’re not, and you both want to go on to the mortgage, that’s absolutely fine. We don’t need both people to be working through the CIS scheme. We can use both incomes. 

It also doesn’t matter if you’re not both First Time Buyers, but there might be things to factor in around stamp duty land tax. If one of you isn’t a First Time Buyer, you won’t get any stamp duty discount as a First Time Buyer.

If the other person on the mortgage isn’t a First Time Buyer, we’ve got to consider whether they have a property in the background. Is that going to be rented out? Is the rent going to cover the mortgage? There are various considerations, but it’s not a problem. We can deal with everything there.

Do both buyers have to be First Time Buyers? Do couples lose First Time Buyer status if one partner bought in the past?

You don’t have to be First Time Buyers to get a mortgage using CIS income. That’s the first thing. I do lots of mortgages for people buying their second or third properties or even investment properties.

What you might not get is the small incentives from lenders – but they are minuscule these days. A typical incentive might be £250 pounds cashback for a First Time Buyer.

The second question is on whether couples lose First Time Buyer status if one bought in the past – and they wouldn’t get the stamp duty land tax benefit. As of now in May 2025, First Time Buyers don’t pay any stamp duty up to a certain threshold. Second time buyers would. 

But as far as mortgages go, there isn’t much to shout about for a First Time Buyer. You’re not really losing out on much.

Do I have to pay stamp duty if my partner is a CIS First Time Buyer, but I’m not?

Yes. If one of you is a First Time Buyer and the other isn’t, you would have to pay stamp duty based on the worst case scenario.

As of May 2025, when we’re recording this, First Time Buyers do not pay stamp duty as long as the purchase price is £300,000 or below. I’m not a tax advisor, so do your own check, but usually for a First Time Buyer, anything above £300,000 is liable for stamp duty land tax. 

What does being joint tenants or tenants in common mean?

This is crossing into legal advice – I can give background information, but in making the decision about joint tenants or tenants in common, you should speak to a solicitor or legal advisor.

Let’s say this is your first property, you’re a CIS subcontractor and you’re going to buy with your wife. You might decide to go as joint tenants. As joint tenants, if one of you were to die, your share of the property moves automatically to the other, surviving owner on that property. 

If you buy a property as tenants in common, the property ownership is split on the deeds with the Land Registry. Tenants in common is often used where friends or people who are not married buy property together. It just means that if one of them dies, their share of the property falls to their legal estate and doesn’t automatically go to the surviving owner.

It doesn’t mean the survivor is suddenly kicked out of the house. They could continue to live in the property. But if that property is sold, 50% would go to the estate of the deceased at that point.

Tenants in common doesn’t have to be 50-50. It could be 60-40 or 99-1.  Perhaps one person is putting in all of the deposit or the majority of it. They might agree that the ownership is 80% to one partner and 20% to the other. 

It can also be used for inheritance tax planning and estate planning. But these are all conversations to have with a solicitor or legal advisor. 

Can I get a mortgage with a guarantor as a CIS worker? What is a Joint Borrower Sole Proprietor mortgage and can I get one as a CIS worker?

People often talk about guarantors on a mortgage. I’ve been doing this job since 2007 and I’ve never arranged a mortgage with a guarantor. In the old days somebody could come along and guarantee the mortgage to give confidence to the mortgage lender.

Today, there are two ways to do this. You can be a guarantor on a mortgage by adding your name and your income to the mortgage application. When I first started in this industry, I did a lot of mortgages where a parent would join their child on the mortgage and their income would be used to boost the affordability. That’s how a guarantor could be used on a CIS mortgage.

The problem is that it has implications for stamp duty. If that parent goes on the mortgage for affordability, they’re on the deeds of the property, and this will be seen as an additional property for them. That means a lot more stamp duty to pay.

Being on the deeds could also have implications for the parents’ inheritance tax and estate planning. So mortgage lenders came up with a solution, called Joint Borrower Sole Proprietor. 

Let’s imagine you’ve got a son or daughter who’s a CIS worker, paid through the CIS scheme.

One parent or both – even up to three people with some lenders – can join the mortgage as a guarantor. Their income is added to the application and they are liable for the mortgage payments. If the son doesn’t pay, everybody else is liable.

But with a Joint Borrower Sole Proprietor mortgage, the parents are not on the deeds of the property – and that gets them off the hook for extra stamp duty. It doesn’t impact them for estate planning because they’re only on the mortgage application, not the property deeds.

Lots more lenders are allowing Joint Borrower Sole Proprietor mortgages, with up to four applicants and four incomes.

The things to be careful about is the age of your parents. For a 25 year mortgage, we’d hope the parent would be no more than 50. Lenders are happy to take second incomes up to about the age of 75 – as long as they’re not doing heavy manual work.