Is it possible to remortgage/refinance our french house

[Jilly28]

We have owned a property in france for 3 years, we would like to refinance/remortgage to try and get a better rate as we think we have quite a high interest rate, would anyone know if this is possible either in england or france, possibly borrow a bit more to finish of renovations.

 

regards

jilly

[makeiteasy]

Hi Jilly,

YES it is possible to remortgage your french house !!! I'm credit broker and work with building societies which are remortgaging your house in France, but it is very unknown because none of french banks do it.

So please contact me and i'll advise you to the best way to do it

 

[Hegs]

>but it is very unknown because none of french banks do it.

Absolute rubbish!

We just remortgaged with Credit Lyonnaise who gave us a much, much better rate than Abbey National - we kept the same loan amount, reduced the term from 20 to 15 years and reduced the amount we pay every month.

We did this through http://www.empruntis.com/ - what you want is a "Rachat de credit immobilier"

[BJSLIV]

Its not that the French banks don't do remortgages, they simply do not favour them unlike the UK situation.

There are also higher fixed costs involved in doing the paperwork for the transfer , and you won't find fee free offers like you can in the UK.

This sets out the pros , cons, and pitfalls quite clearly.

http://www.meilleurtaux.com/savoir/guide/grachatpret.shtml

 

 

[Teamedup]

We changed our mortgage four times to get better rates, first time with our own bank and then with another and then another. However, they would only re loan against what was actually owed and not let us increase the amount of borrowing.

[makeiteasy]

Dear Hegs,

i don't know whether or not your are used with the french mortgage system(as i am since 13 years), but i'm sorry to tell you that you are wrong.You are only talking about refinancing your mortgage with another bank as Teamedup explained and in that case it is only a"rachat de pret".Every bank is able to do it.

The case i was talking about is if you purchased a house cash and some time after you need to raise money or you need to borrow more money than just refinance the current mortgage.

Then you should set up a "credit hypothecaire non affecte" which very few building societies are able to do.When Mr Sarckozy was finance Secretary he expected to allow french banks to do it, but when he left i guess that his project followed him.

[Hegs]

Celine,

Credit Lyonnaise told me I could increase my loan to 46,000 euros more than I currently have borrowed. We also were offered more by BARFIMMO (part of Barclays), up to 80% of the original purchase price. I have the offer letter in front of me now.

Both what we did, and what we would have done if we had borrowed more, is in British English called a remortgage and in US English called a refinancing.

We didn't accept the extra money offer so I have no idea if in French that would be called something else, just that the French banks offered it to us.

So what you wrote was wrong!

The BARFIMMO offer came from www.french-mortgage.com who charge a brokerage fee 0.75% with a UKP 350 minimum.

The offer we accepted from www.empruntis.com, the brokerage fee was absorbed by Credit Lyonnaise.

I note your brokerage fee is 1% with a 1000 EUR minimum.

Cheers, Hegs

[makeiteasy]

Hegs,

what proposed the Credit Lyonnais is just a simple "mortgage" to refinance your previous mortgage and then you could add of course an amount if you intend to do works and sometime including fees for the bank, the notary and the "hypotheque" but you had to justify what this money was for and in any case you could use it as an extra income.

The offer of Barfimmo looks like a remortgage as we use to call it with the  british mortgage advisers and british mortgage brokers i'm working with.You could raise a certain percentage of the value of your house without proving what you want to do with the money.You could of course repay the previous mortgage but also purchase whatever you want.

It is that one which is not easy to find in France.So i'm in any case wrong but we are just not talking about the same thing, and my fees are just the minimum that french brokers are used to charge.

All my clients were very happy with using my services which are personalized and thanks to the fact that i'm speaking english they are understanding all the process and what they are signing.I also made them save a lot of money thanks to the rate i negociated for them.I'm convinced that any website could afford the same service.But sure i'm not looking after people who are always trying to pulling down prices and prefer the chepeast price to a high  quality of service.

Cheers.