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Mortgage advice
Hello all you expert expats,
Can anyone advise as to whether it would be a good idea to go for a fixed mortgage at the moment? I'm thinking the rates are quite low so it might be..
Also, there seems to be a lot of banks and mortgage companies out there - does anyone know a good mortgage broker or has anyone recent experience and can recommend a bank for low rates, helpfulnessess ect?
Thanks in advance!
I believe for this you have to shop around, and that's the advice we got from colleagues and friends, but this is about a year ago, so not sure if things have changed.
Our personal experience was the following:
Went to our bank, they gave us a rate.
Then we went to another bank, they gave us a rate that was much higher than our bank. When that bank saw the other bank's rate, then they said, oh yes, we can do something similar. Then they proposed a new lower rate than our bank's rate.
We went to a 3rd bank and they matched the lower rate from 2nd bank.
We repeated the process with another bank, but they wouldn't budge from their rate which was higher than the 2nd bank.
Then we went back to our bank and told them the lower rate the other bank had offered, and they matched that rate and also gave us a small discount on insurance.
Thus, the only advice I could give is, go to a bank, obtain their rate and then shop around. Also, while you visit the other banks, have the documents of the previous banks with you because when you tell them, ah, but such and such bank gave me this rate, then they will ask for proof.
Only thing is that this requires time from you and we didn't have so much free time available so maybe we could have shopped around some more, but truly, it was a bit of an exhausting experience.
And also, even though our bank gave us a good rate, our friends ended up getting a better rate with another bank, and that's why I think is hard to say, go to this bank, they have the lower rate. It seems that sometimes they compete among themselves so just because we got a good rate from bank A, doesn't mean that you will have a good rate from them, so you just need to get out there and get your own data. Well, that's just my opinion. Other's might have a better approach. :)
My friend is in the process of buying an apt. ING offered a 25 Y fixed at 4.1%
He went to BNP and they offered fixed 3.2% for 25Y.
ING immediately matched BNP's offer.
As written above: shop around.
ING gave me an excellent 20 year fixed rate - could not be beaten.
A good broker is carol.vanmeerhaeghe@immotheker.be
To R: Could you share if the mortgage is for 90%, 100% of the purchase, etc.?
I got 3.45% from BNP for 100% purhcase price, similar offer from Centea. Perhaps I should still shop around for lower rate.
