UK finance for French house purchase

[Angie]

Hi all

Does anyone know of a UK Bank (or other) institution that will give a mortgage secured solely on a French property.  We currently have a mortgage on our French house with Abbey National France (we live in the UK).  The main reason for choosing them initially was because all monthly payments could be made straight from a UK bank account without incurring any fees or charges - after only 9 months with Abbey this has changed because they have been taken over by UCB.  We are not too worried about incurring a small monthly charge but our last 2 mortgage payments have arrived late and our latest one hasn't reached the account at all and we could really do without this hassle each month as it takes an absolute age to sort things out.

[Sunday Driver]

To change your mortgage because of a glitch in payment transmission sounds a bit drastic.  You'd be better off finding out where the problem lies - your UK bank or Abbey France and get them to sort it out.  Automatic payments are automatic and should arrive on the day - no reason why they should be delayed or not received at all. Or are you sending them a cheque each month.....

[booboo]

UCB, that's BNP, and they're pretty bad and expensive! Have you not thought of contacting another french bank to buy 'rachat' your mortgage?? You could try credit agricole as they have english speaking branches (britline, ca paris...)

[Angie]

Thanks both for your advice.  I think we may have to try and remortgage with another French bank  - Booboo, we will look at Credit Agricole as they seem a viable alternative.  As for payment transmission problems - there doesn't appear to be a problem with the transmission of payments at all (we have used the system satisfactorily since the account opened - electronic transfer) its just that they seem to "mislay" the payment once it arrives at the bank; it usually turns up eventually and the attitude is "it was credited to the wrong account" or something along the lines of "the letter saying we hadn't received the payment was sent out in error".  It may be that these monthly communications are just a glitch, but we are getting rather fed up with them at the moment.

We realised too late how expensive Abbey were, but as mentioned our initial reason for using them was that the transactions were straightforward and came straight from a UK bank account. But now they are UCB it is all immaterial!!!