Frequently asked questions

No, we can arrange everything for you over the phone or by email as long as you are able to provide all of the necessary paperwork to support your application by post to our office.

If you are buying an off-plan development, a "grace period" is drawn into your mortgage offer which is a period of between 1 and 2 years during which you do not have to repay the loan (but simply pay the life insurance payments) whilst you are waiting for the property to be completed.

Thus, you do not have to worry about paying out mortgage repayments for a property that isn't yet bringing you in any income.
For off-plan properties that are paid in stage payments, funds are drawn down from the mortgage only as they are needed and it is only the drawn down funds that accumulate interest.

However, there is a small charge made by the bank each month for releasing the funds in this way.
These costs are very low and are calculated on the basis of the diminishing balance.

Each purchaser named on the reservation contract must be included on the mortgage application form and supporting paperwork must be provided for each purchaser.

The bank has the final say on the maximum number of applicants allowed. If there are more than 4 applicants, the bank will decide if there is a real connection between those people and if the risk is acceptable.

If you are both purchasing the property, you both need to be included on the mortgage application form. As long as there are no serious past credit issues, a non-earner can apply jointly with an earning applicant.

The bank will decide how best to insure the applicants in this situation (normally they will only insure the earning applicant).
All of the necessary documentation requested by the bank will have to be provided by both applicants irrespective of whether they are employed or not (although the unemployed borrower will obviously not provide payslips).

There is always a legal representative that oversees every sale in France called a Notaire.
You do not choose the notaire; he is allocated and is usually local. Therefore many people like the comfort of using an Ireland/UK based, French speaking expert lawyer to assist in the purchase process as well.

Whilst not strictly necessary it can save you money by ensuring that the purchase is structured in a way that is both tax efficient in both France and the UK/Ireland. This service will cost around 1% of the property price.

It would be such a shame to miss out on interest rates as low as 4.95% fixed on 20 years in France.
With CLV FINANCE assisting you throughout the whole mortgage process, applying for a French mortgage is not as daunting or as difficult as it may seem at first.

By taking a French mortgage for this investment it leaves you with the possibility of making another investment using any equity or funds you are able to find in Ireland. And if you still need another reason, if you have a French mortgage then you will benefit from tax relief on mortgage interest to offset any rental income you make from the property.

Applying for a French mortgage should never affect the date at which you can sign the title deeds to your property as we are fully aware of the timeline and deadlines of the purchase process and can liaise with the Agent that you are using in order to make sure we keep to these deadlines.

There is normally a wait of at least 2 months following the signing of the reservation contract before the title deeds are signed and this is more than enough time to set up your mortgage.

We have a good relationship with all of the lenders we use and can always make sure they speed up an application if necessary.

CLV FINANCE feels that its service speaks for itself and more than justifies the fee charged. If you were to go to the French bank directly you would not be able to benefit from the relationship that we have built up with all our lenders that enables us to speed up applications and negotiate any problems.

As we have a lot of experience in applying for French mortgages, we know exactly how it works, how to put forward the best application to the bank on your behalf and how to guarantee that the bank give you the best offer possible.

As we are confident in our ability to guarantee you a French mortgage offer we do not ask you for our fee until you are sent your offer. If we don't secure you a mortgage offer, you don't pay us a penny for all of the work done for you.

Over the years we have researched into all of the mortgage packages offered by all of the main French banks and the reason we don't work with certain lenders is that we have found that their packages are not best tailored to our clients.

We will however research into any lender you would prefer to use to ensure for definite that their package is not better-tailored to your needs.

We are not tied to any one bank so we can always work with new banks if we do find that they have a good package to offer our clients.

If your application is unsuccessful with one lender we are always able to resubmit your application to another of the lenders we work with. If this is still not successful it is not the end of the world.

As long as you kept your side of the bargain and did your very best to apply for the mortgage within the given deadlines then you will be able to obtain a full refund of your reservation deposit.

All you will need to do is send the developer the official letter provided by the French bank stating that you were refused a mortgage.