Almost Home
This blog continues our story of the experience purchasing a house in France as expats.
Our previous blog discussed the volume of personal information required by the bank for a French mortgage. Now we’re going to tell you what happens after the mortgage is approved.
Mortgage Approval
After providing the extensive list of information requested by the French bank, see our previous blog about that, it took just under 4 weeks before we had approval for the mortgage on a financial basis. IE they were happy with our finances and could approve us for a loan financially.
Sounds good no, well there was one last thing, the bank wanted their own independent valuation on the property being purchased. Well that was a surprise to both us and our immobilier agent. Was it because we are non resident? We can not tell but the French banks do seem very thorough in their checking of details around their risk.
Arranging the independent valuation took a few days, with confusion between the immobilier and mortgage broker about how it was being arranged.
After some to and fro and seemingly scheduling problems with the sellers, the valution was arranged for about 2 weeks after it was first disussed. It was around lunch time on the 2nd day after the valuation that the bank confirmed it as satisfactory. The next step was receiving the mortgage offer officially. That was to be shared on the bank’s website.
We had gone through the process of openning an account with the French bank the week before and had checked that our online access and banking apps all worked ok. We were ready to accept the mortgage and proceed to completion as quickly as possible.
Are we there yet?
We had a mortgage offer, we read it and it was all good. Did that mean that we could just sign and move to completion, like we would in the UK or USA?
No, of course not. It turned out that in France there is a compulsory 10 day cooling off period that is required to be observed with any mortgage offer! So another 10 day wait then only on day 11 after acknowleging the offer on the banks website, would we be allowed to sign the mortgage papers.
After that the notaire generally needs a week to arrange the completion of the sale.
We told the immobilier admin team that we would 100% definitely accept the mortgage and sign at the absolute earliest opportunity.
We had paid our deposit before the 10 day cooling period was finished after signing the CdV sales contrsct. We have been very honest with all information and trying to show clearly our intentions were aligned with our ability to purchase the property. But hey, you can’t be too careful if you’re a French bank. I understand that cooling off periods protect the borrowers from rushed decisions or any uncertainty that may come up. But we don’t have that uncertainty so we were just a little frustrated.
So after acknowledging the mortgage offer on line on Wednesday 10th September, the admin team passed the confirmation of mortgage offer to the notaire to schedule the sale completion, signing the AdV. they came back with Friday 03 October at 5:30pm as the propossed time.
We had been hoping for Friday 26th Sept or Monday 29th September. Friday 3rd is not ideal for us. Why, well the following 2 weeks we both had business trips scheduled. One of us would have to travel the day after signing if it was on the 3rd, having maximum 12 hours in the new house, and the other person would then be away the week afterwards. It would have meant travelling to Bergerac on the Thursday then to the UK a day and a half later.
We really hoped to be able to have a few days to sort out the house together. So we pushed back and the admin team came through. The notaires agreed to late morning on 1st October instead. A much more pleasant schedule for travel and settling into the house.
Accepting The Mortgage Offer
As stated, on day 11 after we acknowledged the mortgage offer, it was released for us to sign on the banks website. We were pleasantly surprised to find that this was automated as it happened on a Sunday. We received an email indicating that the offer was ready to be signed, we went to the bank’s website, acknowledged everything, received a secure code via SMS and signed the mortgage offer electronically.
French bank documents to be reviewed and signed to accept the mortgage contract.
The Final Steps
So we have a date for completion and the mortgage contract is accepted.
While waiting to sign the mortgage contract, we have already transferred to our French bank account, all the funds that we need to pay ourselves towards the purchase and all fees etc.
House insurance has been arranged to start the day of completion.
Mortgage amortisation insurance, basically life insurance on the one us who earns the most, tied to paying off the morgage is optional but something that we personally want. That is still in progress due to the requirement for medical reports. But it is not a requirement or blocker to completion of the sale. We hope it can be arranged before completion but if not then it is not a problem. I hope!
We have booked time off work for the moving.
We have book hotel accomodation for the night before completion.
We have packed most things that we will need to take on our initial trip.
We think we have every necessary step covered now.
It will be for the admin team or notaire to tell us otherwise in the next week.
If you read this far, thank you for taking the time and I hope you enjoy learning about the experience.
Or next blog will hopefully be about the completion process in 2 weeks time.
