best mortgage deal

Hi all,

Presently organising a mortgage for our place and before we make our decision we'd like to hear from those of you who have got a really good deal on theirs and who you got it from.

Factors like opening commission, interest rates, % they will lend etc,etc.. are so variable from bank to bank.

Any info, public or private message would be most helpful. 

Regards,

Ken & Elaine

Hi Ken & Elaine

We too are looking around for mortgage deals and are finding it hard to find a great deal. We have been intouch with brokers and banks direct and are finding it difficult to get a 70% mortgage with interest rate under 4.7%. We are seriously considering going with Halifax Espana as they have a branch in Los Alcazares in a square with several restuarants and a supermarket, where all the staff speak English and as we have a Halifax bank account in England we can transfer money from UK to Spain free of charge.They will also set up your Spanish bank account for you and there is a UK phone number on the Halifax Espana website that you can ring to speak to a UK based staff.

Good luck with your search and let us know if you find a good deal

Adrian & Liz

Hi there

I feel very concerned about what i have read here. I currently have our solicitor preparing a mortgage offer in principle and i will be very dissapointed if the interest is as high as 4.7%. I will let you know when i hear more.

Tina

Hi,

Don't be lulled into a false sense of security by Halifax Hispania.  Yes, they do offer international bank transfers 'free of charge', but anyone can see that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Halifax Hispania are able to offer this by loading the rate against you and you will get noticeably less euros for your pound than you might expect.  It is therefore well worth shopping around because a supposed 'free' money transfer isn't necessarily the most beneficial option.

Shop around now because banks over here are now starting to offer 80% mortgages to non-residents and 4.7% does sound rather high.

Good luck all,

best wishes

Hi

The bank director in Caja Murcia in the square in Los Alcazares also speaks very good English - we have decided not to take out a spanish mortgage,(we only wanted a mortgage over 10 years & the set up fees in Spain which are much higher than the UK wiped out the interest rate saving for us) but when we called in there she was very informative & their set up costs & valuation fees seemed lower than other banks. They would at the time offer up to 80% of valuation. www.cajamurcia.es

Solbank are very good in the same square in Los Alcazares - we have opened bank accounts there & are very happy with the online banking. The manager is swedish & the assistant manager Rolando is argentinian, but both speak excellent English. They have phoned us at home in England within the hour when we have emailed with queries (far better sevice than our UK bank). Their set up costs seemed much higher for mortgages though & were only offering 70% of valuation www.solbank.com

We also met the director of the London branch of La Caixa bank at The Place in the Sun Exhibition & he has emailed a few times to try & get our business. Not sure what their rates & set up costs are, but they are based in Waterloo Place in London -tel 0207 9306962. www.lacaixa.es

We have friends in Spain who got a really good deal through Bankinter - I think they are in the same square at Los Alcazares

Hope this helps

Hi,

It is worth speaking to Taray directly about mortgage offers as they seem to have special deals with the bank. We have bought a property directly off Taray at the Torre Alcantara site and they have put us in touch with a director at Caja Murcia to arrange a mortgage. The deal offered this way was far better than anything we could achieve when we went into many of the banks already mentioned and indeeed by going into Caja Murcia off the street. I am at work at present so don't have the rates to hand but off the top of my head I seem to recall that the interest rate was 0.65% above the euribor and the set up fee was 0.75% or 1%. Hope this helps.

Alternatively if Taray already have a mortgage over your plot you have the option of taking over their mortgage, and the rates are favourable. Our plot did not have a mortgage on it which is why they referred us to Caja Murcia.They also have deals with other banks but when we enquired in November Caja Murcia was the best one but that might have changed by now.

Debbie Howarth

We have used a mortgage broker in London to find us a Spanish mortgage. We are going ahead with an interest rate of Euribor +1.1% which I think currently gives us a rate of 4.6%. We were hoping for a cheaper rate, but seeing as we had specific criteria that we needed fullfilling, we don't feel that it's such a bad deal. (We wanted 30 years interest only with no penalties for overpayments over the full term - allowing us a low cost start with the facility to pay off capital whenever we wish). The broker is Savills Private Finance Tel: 020 7409 5975. They ask you very carefuly exactly what you want from the mortgage and have certainly found us what we were looking for.