After much searching we have fallen for a large old timber lakeside house overseas which we plan to eventually move into, to live in permanently.

In the meantime we will need to raise around £100k to complete the sale. This is much less than 50% of the asking price.

However we both work in the UK and as our work situation will not be as good (at least initially) when we move overseas it would seem to make sense to raise the money based on our current UK jobs.

We can not raise any further money on our UK home but plan to sell this ASAP anyway. However I think this will take some time and also our UK work commitments will really keep us here for at least 6 - 7 months.

In the meantime the owners of the timber house have already moved out so the property is vacant so there is some urgency to move things forward quickly. It might be possible to rent the timber house ahead of us moving there.

Anyone here had any experience, tips or suggestions for getting a UK mortgage for a TIMBER house ?

We would be willing to consider most options including bridging loans, commercial mortgages etc

Forgot to say the closest neighbour, an even older timber house, would be around 30-40 metres away (around 100 ft) so any fire risk would be lower.

Really hope someone here has some experience (self build perhaps) of borrowing money against a timber property.

Also has anyone taken out a Euro mortgage whilst living in the UK and would you recommend it ?

I don't know how much help this is, but some friends are building a timber house abroad, guy is an architect, when he was asked about the fire risk he said it is far less than steel (still just melts down completely in seconds - see twin towers - when it reaches a certain point, certain types of timber will take ages to burn down).

Have you tried the Ecology Building Society?