NHS Consultant Secures £850,000 Mortgage

Dr Sarah, 44, is a consultant cardiologist working for an NHS trust with a base salary of £128,000. In addition, she runs a private practice generating £74,000 per year, giving her total professional income of £202,000.

She had found a £1.1 million property in Richmond and had £250,000 available as a deposit. She needed to borrow £850,000 to complete the purchase. Two high street banks she approached would only count her NHS salary. One offered £576,000 (4.5x NHS salary). The other offered slightly less. Neither would consider the private practice income at all, citing the difficulty in verifying irregular invoice income.

Mainstream lenders frequently treat private medical income with caution. The concern is that private practice revenue can be variable and is not guaranteed in the way a salaried position is. Many underwriting systems simply flag non-PAYE income and exclude it unless the lender has a specific policy for medical professionals.

For Dr Sarah, being assessed only on her NHS salary would mean she could borrow just over half of what she needed. She had a clean credit history, a substantial deposit, and combined income comfortably above 4x the purchase price, but the standard lender process could not accommodate her income structure.

We identified a private bank on our panel that has a specific lending proposition for high-earning professionals, including medical consultants with mixed NHS and private income. These lenders underwrite individual cases rather than running applications through automated scoring systems.

The private bank required two years of private practice accounts, a letter from her accountant confirming the income trajectory, and evidence of a healthy forward order book. Dr Sarah could provide all of this. The lender was satisfied that her combined income of £202,000 was robust and assessed the application on that basis.