Halal Finance Guide

Mizan Journal

The House

Issue 01 · September 2026 · 65 long pieces · housing first

The world’s most stubborn problem in Islamic finance is not a sukuk. It is a front door in Birmingham, a solicitor who has never seen a Home Purchase Plan, and a rate that is still a point too high.

“A cash-flow that looks like a mortgage is not a ruling. The ruling is who owns the brick when the rain comes in.”

Q3 2026 street card

Snapshot, not an offer

4.50%

Offa

5.09%

Gatehouse

5.14%

Al Rayan

5.29%

BLME

5.35%

UBL UK

How to hold it
London terrace at blue hour

01 / 01 · The House

The house is the whole subject.

Sukuk, screens, and zakat calculators are the easy pages. The hard page is a terraced house, a 25-year document, and a family that will live inside the fiqh whether the Twitter thread was right or not.

9 min · Editor’s letter

The Wire

Full dispatch

  • 19 Oct 2025 · @Ibrahimifg

    The premium

    Islamic home finance in Britain has run 1–2% more expensive than a high-street mortgage. His GBP income fund crossed £40m and is writing funding lines to StrideUp and Offa on the theory that more providers, not another fatwa, close the gap.

  • 19 Feb 2025 · @IFguru

    The premium

    The brutal version of the same fact: Islamic mortgages ~20% more expensive over a typical book, with a handful of providers against two hundred conventional lenders.

  • 2 Jun 2026 · @Ibrahimifg

    Risk

    If the house is destroyed, a conventional borrower still owes the debt. On a true co-ownership plan the bank still owns its share — insurance first, then the owner of the asset takes the hit. That is the difference a spreadsheet of monthly payments cannot show.

  • 3 Aug 2026 · @muslimfinancier

    Who holds the book

    Gatehouse sold about £405m across 1,770 UK Home Purchase Plans to Waterfall Asset Management. Standard Chartered advised. Servicing stays with Gatehouse. The religion, he notes, lives in the contract, not the letterhead of the buyer.

  • 27 Jun 2026 · @TitanProtectHQ

    Rates

    A Q3 2026 rate card circulating on X: Offa 4.50% diminishing musharakah, Gatehouse 5.09%, Al Rayan 5.14%, BLME 5.29%, UBL UK 5.35%. Treat it as a snapshot, not a KIID.

  • 4 Sep 2026 · @IFAMMortgage

    Refinance

    Gatehouse launched limited-edition two- and five-year HPP refinance products for UK residents with no product or application fees. The conventional market would call this a remortgage. The documents must still be a sale of units plus rent, not a new loan.

  • 2 Jun 2026 · @MortgageStrat

    Family

    Gatehouse removed extra deposit requirements where the HPP is a discounted family purchase — buying a home at undervalue from a relative. English conveyancing meets hibah and undervalue. Solicitors, not Twitter, should read that.

  • 1 Sep 2026 · @fizzyjam

    The sameness charge

    The live objection on X: amortisation on a so-called riba-free musharakah or ijara looks almost identical, and the conventional mortgage is often slightly cheaper. The desk’s answer is in the documents, not the cash-flow chart.

In this issue

Brass keys and a conveyance

01 / 02 · The House

Three contracts, one front door.

A UK Home Purchase Plan is not a mortgage with Arabic in the recital. It is a partnership, a lease, and a series of sales stacked onto English land. If any layer is fake, the name is decoration.

12 min · Anatomy

Scale with a house paperweight

01 / 04 · The Market

The Islamic mortgage premium, without the slogan.

Muslims in Britain have paid more for a lawful house. That is a funding problem, a scale problem, and a distribution problem. It is not a proof that the product is fake — and it is not a reason to take the cheaper riba loan.

11 min · The market

Files on a solicitor desk

01 / 11 · Practice

Twenty questions for the solicitor who has only done mortgages.

If they cannot answer these without calling the bank’s panel, they are learning on your stamp duty. Pay for someone who has completed a Home Purchase Plan.

8 min · Checklist

Deed box, keys and papers on an oak desk

01 / 30 · Practice

Forty years to a front door.

British Islamic home finance did not begin with a fintech landing page. It began with double stamp duty, a Kuwaiti window, and an Act of Parliament that had to invent a tax for a contract England did not recognise.

12 min · History

49 pieces in this issue. Pick a section, or use the index below.

Index

  1. The house is the whole subject.01 / 01
  2. Three contracts, one front door.01 / 02
  3. Ijara, musharakah, murabaha — pick the one you actually signed.01 / 03
  4. The Islamic mortgage premium, without the slogan.01 / 04
  5. A rate card from the summer, and how to hold it.01 / 05
  6. When a US fund buys 1,770 British homes.01 / 06
  7. Refinance without a new loan.01 / 07
  8. The clause that decides whether you signed a loan.01 / 08
  9. Stamp duty was the trap. Then it was the smear.01 / 09
  10. Who owns the house on day one.01 / 10
  11. Twenty questions for the solicitor who has only done mortgages.01 / 11
  12. If the house is destroyed, who still owes.01 / 12
  13. A second house is not the same worship.01 / 13
  14. Buying from family, below market, without inventing a loan.01 / 14
  15. New-build, leasehold, cladding: where the Islamic book says no.01 / 15
  16. Shared ownership, Help to Buy, and the third partner.01 / 16
  17. Bridging, auctions, and the murabaha that never takes title.01 / 17
  18. The Hanafi clip that will not die.01 / 18
  19. It is not interest-free, and it is not a secret law.01 / 19
  20. Riba is a house problem before it is a banking problem.01 / 20
  21. Zakat on bricks: the house you sleep in, and the one you don’t.01 / 21
  22. Buildings insurance is required. Takaful barely exists.01 / 22
  23. When the owner dies, the house becomes a formula.01 / 23
  24. Saving a deposit without collecting a coupon.01 / 24
  25. Sukuk, REITs, and owning property without a front door.01 / 25
  26. When the ‘property company’ is a bank in a hard hat.01 / 26
  27. Plan 5 on the payslip, HPP on the offer.01 / 27
  28. Do not house a family on a token.01 / 28
  29. The wire: what X was actually arguing.01 / 29
  30. Forty years to a front door.01 / 30
  31. The financial faith penalty.01 / 31
  32. The third provider in seven years.01 / 32
  33. A sukuk made of British front doors.01 / 33
  34. Ninety-five percent of a house.01 / 34
  35. The house you buy from another airport.01 / 35
  36. It is not interest-free. It is not a gift.01 / 36
  37. Overpay, settle, leave.01 / 37
  38. When they take the house.01 / 38
  39. Two names on the door.01 / 39
  40. Shop downstairs, family upstairs.01 / 40
  41. England is not Scotland.01 / 41
  42. The life policy they will demand.01 / 42
  43. Rent review is not a rate.01 / 43
  44. The broker who has never sold one.01 / 44
  45. The bonus is not interest. The wrapper still might be.01 / 45
  46. Selling the house before the bank is gone.01 / 46
  47. The surcharge does not care that the rent is rent.01 / 47
  48. SONIA in the lease.01 / 48
  49. Someone already owned these plans.01 / 49