Hi! I saw a few threads here about landlords receiving enquires by people from Hong Kong, and don’t understand what all these BNO/LOTR is about.
So I would like to explain a bit for landlords here to get an idea.
First of all, I am from Hong Kong as well.
Before 1997, HK was own by UK Govn, and just before HK hand back to China, the UK Govn issue a type of passport call BNO(British National Overseas) to HK citizens, at that time HK people has choice to get it or not, so not everyone in HK has the BNO passport.
Ok, lets cut the history lesson. Time flys to 2019, the Yellow Umbrella incident in HK making the UK Govn thinks they should do something to save HK people from getting kill or jailed unfairly by thr brutal China/HK Govn, so the UK Govn has open a new immigration route called BNO visa, for HK people who have BNO passport moving to UK.
The rules are:
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One person in a family must have a BNO passport.
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They must have enough funds for at least 6 month’s living, the border control will check this before they grant a LOTR to that person/family.
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Now, LOTR is a temporary visa of 6 month to let those HK people process their immigration visa in UK, LOTR is allow to work or study.
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Once the actual BNO Visa approved, they can stay for 5 years.
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They have to pay a 5 years NHS fee about £2700 per person.
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No public funding allowed in this 5 years.
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And no criminal record before
Now, below are the important part which I want landlords here to understand:
Just the NHS fee for a family of 4 is costing more than £10000, which they have to pay in once, and 90% of people from HK these days mostly comes to UK in a family unit, as a parent, no one will risk giving up their steady job in HK and move to UK if they don’t have enough money because they understand there won’t be any funding support from the UK Govn.
And most people just sold their property in HK and bring the cash here for living, and just a brief idea for you, the property price in HK is even more expensive than London (In terms of $/sq ft), you can imagine how much cash they have after selling their property.
Again, lets just put it in short~
People who dare to give up everything in HK and move to UK, MOST of them does not lack of money!!
And they won’t play tricks about not paying rent and wait for your evict, because once they got into illegal issues, it may effect their citizens application after 5 years.
One thing I don’t really understand, the reference check here rely on the tenants have a job or not, but what if a local guy resign his job just because he’s too lazy maybe after 2 months of rent and won’t move out, playing dirty tricks because he know the landlord will take very long time before throwing them out of the house?
What I am trying to say is, please don’t filter out enquires from Hong Kong people just because they don’t have a job yet in UK, and most of them know they won’t pass the credit check and willing to pay 6 month’s rent in advance, and you’ll found most of them are nice and friendly (Although some of them don’t speak English too good)
We are all just look for a house to start our new life here, so please don’t give us a hard time, and if anyone wants to know more, you’re welcome to reply below, I’ll try my best to answer.