• Buying in: Val d’Isere
• Property price: €3,500,000
• Loan Amount: €2,500,000
• Mortgage Type: repayment
• Mortgage Term: 20 years
• Interest Rate: 1.70%
• Loan-to-value: 71%

The background:

Another French expat in London treating himself with an exceptional chalet in Val d’Isere for both personal use and investment.

Our client wanted the highest LTV possible to limit his exposition to the French Property Wealth Tax while having the lowest rate possible as a second request.

Our approach:

The profile of the client was strong and it should have been easy. However, the application happened right during the COVID outbreak and the lockdown in March, April and May. As the banks were a bit unsure of what was happening on the market, because of the high LTV and the mortgage amount required, the process became quite lengthy. 

This is not a dig at the bank, not at all. On the contrary, French Private Finance would like to take this opportunity to thank the bank(s) involved in this process for doing the best they could during these unprecedented times and ensure our client ends up with great mortgage terms: a rate fixed for 20 years at 1.70%!

On top of it, the client had to do medical tests for the insurance which took a bit of time as well due to a shortage of availability in appointments.

As the client was going to rent out his property using an SARL set up, the bank decided to set up a bridging loan to pre-finance the VAT. As soon as our client was getting refunded the VAT, he would repay the bridging loan. That’s clever and a win-win for both parties.

COVID played a big factor in this transaction but it was not all negative. The client managed to negotiate the price down from 3,9M€ to 3.5M€. Not too bad all in all!