Net migration has fallen by almost half in a year. But for the hundreds of thousands of skilled workers, carers and students who arrived during the recent high-migration years, the practical questions haven't gone away: where to live, whether renting will ever give way to owning, and whether a mortgage is even possible before their immigration status is fully settled. The honest answer, in many cases, is: sooner than they think.
A different kind of migration wave
The scale of migration to the UK has shifted sharply in the last three years. Net migration peaked at 944,000 in the year to March 2023, driven by a post-pandemic surge in work and study visas, humanitarian routes, and the tail end of the EU Settlement Scheme. By the year ending December 2025, the Office for National Statistics put provisional net migration at 171,000, a fall of 48% on the year before, and around a fifth of the 2023 peak.
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171,000 Provisional net migration to the UK, year ending December 2025 - down 48% on the previous year and around a fifth of the March 2023 peak of 944,000 (ONS). |
The headline number hides a more layered picture. Non-EU+ nationals accounted for roughly 350,000 of net migration over the period, while both British nationals and EU+ nationals were net emigrants - down 136,000 and 42,000 respectively - as more people in those groups left the UK than arrived. Among non-EU+ nationals specifically, the largest single nationalities remain Indian, Pakistani, Chinese and Nigerian; among EU+ nationals, Romanian, Italian and French.
Of the roughly 627,000 non-EU+ nationals who arrived on long-term visas over the period, the routes break down as: study, 47%; work, 23%; asylum, 14%; family, around 7%; and humanitarian routes, around 6%. The fall in the total is driven overwhelmingly by one route: work-related migration fell by 47% year-on-year, as tighter salary thresholds and dependant restrictions took hold.
Why they came: the labour needs behind the numbers
Much of the work-route migration over the past five years has tracked specific, acknowledged UK labour shortages rather than general economic migration. The Health and Care Worker visa, introduced in 2020, became a major recruitment channel for the NHS and, especially, the adult social care sector, which has run persistent staff vacancies for years. The wider Skilled Worker visa route filled shortage occupations across engineering, IT, hospitality and logistics at various points as the shortage occupation list changed.
That period of expansion has since been reined in. Salary thresholds for the Skilled Worker route have risen, care workers can no longer bring dependants, and the shortage occupation list has narrowed - all of which shows up directly in the 47% year-on-year fall in work-route arrivals. Many of the people who arrived on these routes during the expansion years, however, are still in the UK, still working in the roles that were recruited for, and still years away from qualifying for permanent settlement.
Settling into Britain's rental market
For most recent arrivals, that means years spent in the private rented sector. Research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on migrants and the private rented sector found that recent migrants, those in the UK five years or less, rely on private lettings more heavily than almost any other group, and frequently end up in the poorer end of the market: properties that are inadequately maintained, arrangements that see people housed in outbuildings, or sharing with strangers they don't know.
A recurring theme in that research is informality. Many recent migrants find housing through friends, employers or informal agents rather than through a conventional letting process, often without a proper legal tenancy agreement. That leaves them exposed: reluctant to complain about disrepair for fear that losing a job means losing a home in the same moment, and frequently unaware of the tenant rights or support services that could help them.
Layered on top of that is straightforward affordability pressure. Rents have risen sharply across the UK private rented sector in recent years, while changes to Local Housing Allowance have made it harder for tenants receiving housing support to keep pace, a squeeze that falls hardest on newer arrivals who are least likely to have savings, a UK guarantor, or an established rental track record to fall back on.
The pull toward ownership
Against that backdrop, the appeal of owning rather than renting is easy to understand, and it's a majority view among renters generally, not just recent migrants. Ipsos's global attitudes research found that 76% of British renters would like to own their own home, but 60% believe they will never be able to afford to. For someone who has spent several years in insecure, informally-arranged rented housing, ownership represents more than an investment: it's stability, a fixed address, and a stake in the community they have settled in, the ability to stop asking, each year, whether this will still be home next year.
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76% want to own / 60% doubt they'll ever afford it Share of British renters who say they would like to own their own home, and who believe homeownership is out of reach for them (Ipsos). |
The quandary: are they even eligible?
This is where a straightforward housing story turns into a confusing one. Many migrants renting in the UK today assume, reasonably enough, that a mortgage requires Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) - permanent settled status, and that until they have it, homeownership simply isn't on the table. Current immigration policy makes that assumption harder to shake, not easier.
What's actually confirmed and in force, as of today: the qualifying period for ILR remains five years under the current Immigration Rules, nothing has been enacted to change that baseline. A new English-language requirement, raising the bar to level B2, is confirmed and due to take effect from 26 March 2027.
What's proposed, but not law: in November 2025, the Government published "A Fairer Pathway to Settlement," a command paper proposing to extend the standard qualifying period for ILR from five years to ten, with shorter periods for high earners and potentially longer periods, up to fifteen years for people in lower-paid or medium-skilled roles. A consultation on these proposals closed in February 2026 and responses are still under analysis; nothing has been enacted, and it remains unclear how, or whether any change would apply to people already partway through the current five-year route.
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What this means for readers Treat any specific date or figure for a "10-year ILR rule" with real caution unless it is tied to a change actually laid before Parliament on GOV.UK. As things stand, the five-year qualifying period is still the law that applies today. |
That policy uncertainty is corrosive in its own right. Even where nothing has actually changed yet, headlines about a possible ten-year wait for settlement are enough to make people quietly conclude that homeownership is off the table for a decade - and to stop looking into it at all.
That conclusion skips a step. Eligibility for a mortgage is not the same question as eligibility for Indefinite Leave to Remain, and conflating the two is the single most commonly and most costly misunderstanding among migrants renting in the UK today. A number of specialist lenders, and some mainstream ones, will lend to visa holders with sufficient time remaining on their current visa - commonly at least one to two years, depending on the lender - assessing the realistic path to renewal or settlement rather than requiring ILR to already be in hand. The details vary enormously by visa category, lender and individual circumstances, which is exactly why a blanket assumption in either direction, "I can't possibly get a mortgage" or "it'll definitely be fine" tends to be wrong.
Untangling the myth from the mortgage
None of this means every migrant renting in the UK today is a mortgage application away from owning a home, affordability, deposit, credit history and visa category all still matter, and they matter differently case by case. What it does mean is that the starting assumption many people carry that a mortgage is simply unavailable until settlement is secured is, in most cases, wrong, or at least far more negotiable than it appears from the outside.
Smartr Finance has written a detailed, plain-English guide to exactly this question - the most common reasons foreign nationals are turned down for a mortgage, why an early "yes" isn't always the final answer, and how the right lender and legal support get a case to completion. It's a natural next read for anyone weighing up whether now is the moment to stop renting and start asking.