Taking tenancy is a significant milestone in a barrister’s career.
Pupillage is complete. You have secured your place in chambers and are beginning the next stage of developing your own practice. Professionally, it can feel like the point at which your career becomes more established.
From a mortgage perspective, however, it can create an interesting contradiction.
Your professional position may have strengthened. Your earnings may be increasing. Yet you have also moved into full self-employment and may have little, if any, conventional self-employed history.
That can lead to an understandable concern:
“I’ve taken tenancy and become fully self-employed. Have I now started a two-year wait before I can get a mortgage?”
Not necessarily.
Taking tenancy should be understood as the next stage of an established professional journey, rather than automatically being treated in the same way as somebody starting an entirely new business.
When Your Career Moves Faster Than Your Accounts
The first year of tenancy can create an unusual position.
You may have more work, higher earnings and greater professional certainty than you had during pupillage, while having very little of the historic financial evidence traditionally associated with a self-employed mortgage application.
Your career has moved forwards.
Your income may have moved forwards.
Your accounts simply have not had time to catch up.
Henry Dannell’s Journey of the Bar guide recognises this transition specifically. The conclusion of pupillage marks the move into full self-employment and the beginning of preparing the first set of finalised accounts.
For mortgage purposes, that timing matters.
If you have only recently taken tenancy, two completed years of accounts cannot exist. The more useful question is therefore whether an appropriate lender has another way of understanding and assessing your position.
Tenancy Is A Continuation Of Your Professional Journey
A new tenant does not arrive at the point of self-employment without any professional history.
There is a journey behind the application.
You have completed pupillage. During your second six, you may already have begun undertaking your own work and generating income. You have then secured tenancy and continued building that practice.
There can therefore be a clear connection between the income generated during your second six and the development of your practice following tenancy.
This is why I think mortgage advice for barristers needs to look beyond the label of “self-employed”.
If an application is reduced to:
“Self-employed for less than one year.”
it tells an underwriter very little about the professional circumstances behind that status.
The details matter.
The First Set Of Accounts Is Not Necessarily The Whole Picture
When I speak to a barrister who has recently taken tenancy, I want to understand what the practice looks like today.
What income was generated during the second six?
When did tenancy begin?
How has the practice developed since?
What work has been undertaken?
What has been billed and what has been received?
Is there aged debt?
What information is available from chambers?
These questions begin to build a much more useful picture of the applicant’s financial position than simply asking how many tax years have passed.
Henry Dannell’s existing barrister guidance highlights the importance of understanding areas such as current income, aged debt and the timing of work and payments when dealing with barrister cases. It also recognises the role that chambers information can play in providing greater context around how a practice is developing.
Whether a lender will accept that information, and how it will use it for affordability, depends on its individual criteria and underwriting approach.
But it means the conversation can begin with the actual practice rather than an arbitrary anniversary.
The First Year Of Tenancy Can Change Quickly
There is another reason why historic accounts may not always tell the complete story.
Income at the Bar can develop rapidly during the early stages of practice.
The earnings received during pupillage may bear little resemblance to those generated after taking tenancy. As experience grows, instructions develop and the barrister establishes their practice, income can increase significantly.
Henry Dannell’s existing guidance identifies this sharp income trajectory as one of the characteristics of a barrister’s financial journey that lenders do not always fully understand.
That does not mean a lender can simply annualise a few strong months or accept projected earnings as though they have already been received.
There still needs to be appropriate evidence.
But if the practice has progressed materially since pupillage, it makes sense to understand what the latest evidence shows rather than assuming the mortgage position must remain unchanged until another set of accounts is filed.
Sometimes The Challenge Is Timing, Not Affordability
For new tenants, the mortgage challenge can be as much about timing as it is about self-employment.
You may be applying at precisely the point when your conventional financial evidence has not yet caught up with your professional circumstances.
Six months later, there may be more evidence of how the practice is developing.
Once the first accounts are completed, there may be further options.
With a longer history, the range of lenders prepared to consider the application may change again.
Those milestones can matter.
But they do not necessarily mean the answer before reaching them is automatically no.
The question is what can be evidenced today, and which lenders, if any, have the underwriting approach to consider it.
One Lender’s Criteria Should Not Define Your Plans
A newly self-employed barrister approaching a conventional lender may be told that more trading history is required.
That may be entirely correct for that particular lender.
It does not necessarily establish what is possible across the wider market.
Different lenders can take different approaches to complex or less conventional income profiles. Henry Dannell’s wider approach to specialist debt advice centres on understanding those differences and translating a client’s financial circumstances into a format that an appropriate lender can assess.
This becomes particularly important during career transition points, where a simple label can obscure a much stronger underlying story.
Being newly self-employed is relevant.
But so is how you arrived there.
Do Not Create A Two-Year Waiting Period For Yourself
There is a frustrating irony in reaching tenancy, becoming more established professionally and then assuming that the move into full self-employment means your property plans need to be postponed for another two years.
That is not a conclusion I would make without first understanding the case.
There will be situations where additional trading history is required.
The borrowing still needs to be affordable. Income needs to be evidenced in a way the lender is prepared to accept. The size of the deposit, wider commitments and individual circumstances will all influence what can be achieved.
Waiting may sometimes improve the position considerably.
But that decision should be based on the circumstances rather than a general assumption that every new tenant needs two years of accounts.
There is little benefit in imposing a waiting period on yourself before establishing whether one genuinely exists.
Your Mortgage Application Should Explain How Your Career Has Progressed
For me, this is the central point.
A new tenant should not simply be presented as somebody who has “just become self-employed.”
That description misses the professional journey behind the application.
Pupillage.
The second six.
Taking tenancy.
The development of your own practice.
And, importantly, the income evidence available today.
At Henry Dannell, we work with barristers at these transition points because understanding the detail can make a significant difference to how an application is approached. Our role is to understand where you are in your career, establish what can be evidenced and identify lenders whose criteria and underwriting approach may be suited to your circumstances.
Henry Dannell’s existing barrister guidance also reflects the work undertaken with lenders to improve understanding of pupillage, tenancy, aged debt and the income changes that can occur as a barrister’s career develops.
Taking tenancy represents the beginning of an important new stage in your professional career.
Do not automatically assume it also means putting your property plans on hold for the next two years.
A mortgage is secured against your home. Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage or any other debt secured on it. Mortgage availability and lending are subject to individual circumstances, status and lender criteria.
