• Buying in: St Jean de Luz
• Property price: €550,000
• Loan Amount: €440,000
• Mortgage Type: Repayment
• Mortgage Term: 20 years
• Interest Rate: 1.25%
• Loan-to-value: 80%

The background:

The client is a French national living in the United States of America, in New York City. He had found a very spacious, 3-bedroom apartment in St Jean de Luz on the South West of France, near Spain, on the Atlantic Ocean coast.

The client had a plan to use the flat during his holidays in France and rent it a few weeks a year before using it full time for retirement.

Since 2014, the Factca (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) has been voted and it has become more and more difficult to find a bank that would finance US residents as the banks need to provide a lot of documents to the US tax body in regards to the client.

Our approach:

At French Private Finance, we have a network of banks. However, French banks financing US residents are only a few, even though the client is French. The client was also working with another broker based in France who was presenting him with a financing plan requiring him to buy through a special purpose vehicle (SPV) such as a SCI / SARL. Though interesting, they were not fitting the client’s project or profile. We, on the other hand, had an option allowing the client to buy under his own name. Thanks to the other offer, we managed to negotiate the terms a little bit, increasing the LTV from 70% to 80% and decreasing the rate from 1.35% to 1.25% fixed on 20 years.

The client had to come to France, Paris to meet the bank and sign the documents related to the mortgage and French bank account but it was facilitated by his business schedule and travelling arrangement. 

It took 51 days overall to get the mortgage offer, which currently is very fast as French banks are busy.

Edit – by the time of publishing, the deal is no longer available but we wanted to show you how we can help get the extra push.