Your guide to successfully buying property in the UK

With one of the strongest property markets in the world, the United Kingdom is appealing to live in, invest in, to retire or study. It has beauty from the Highlands of Scotland to the South Downs of England, from the Fens of East Anglia to the sandy beaches of Wales and the rolling hills of Northern Ireland, and all the villages and friendly market towns between them. The UK boasts some of the world’s great cities, including the reborn Belfast, Cardiff, Manchester and Liverpool. If you haven’t visited these cities for a while you’ll be impressed; they have recovered from their post-industrial past with billion-pound investments in commercial centres, infrastructure and housing. London, boosted by the success of the 2012 Olympics, lays claim to have overtaken New York as the pre-eminent global city, a beacon of design, enterprise and efficiency.

You can own a piece of all this. The UK has a busy and safe property market where, as the locals say, an Englishman’s home is his castle. Property rights and stable government have been cornerstones of British democracy, as has Britons’ well-known sense of fair play.

There are no restrictions on people from overseas buying a property (although owning property does not, in itself, give you a right to live there) and many overseas buyers have taken up the offer. Why? Because buying a home in the UK can be relatively easy, provided you have all the information available. In our free, downloadable guide, we explain how to buy in the UK, and why you might want to consider investing in UK property.