Hi

Do Swiss banks offer mortgage for properties outside Switzerland ?

Regards

There's at least three questions here...

1. Will a Swiss bank with no branches outside CH give you a foreign exchange mortgage for a property outside CH (eg their Zurich office give you a mortgage in GBP for a property in London)? Or,
2. Will a Swiss bank give a mortgage in CHF on a property outside CH? (eg their Zurich office loan you CHF for you to spend in London) Or,
3. Will a Swiss bank with branches outside CH give mortgages (eg their London branch give you a mortgage)?

1) is difficult, if not unlikely. I tried getting a NZD mortgage through UBS Zurich last year. My personal banker(!) went away and had a poke around and said that it wasn't possible.

2) should be possible. You'd need plenty of documentation. Be very wary of exchange rates otherwise you will get a hit on moving the money out of the country. This perhaps could be mitigated by opening an account in the same bank overseas. Which sort of defeats the point, really...

3) Dunno. Find a branch and ask them.

A big factor is "total business" - if you have millions in assets with them then they will find a way to help.

Just my $0.02.

I used to play football with a guy who worked in Switzerland but lived in France. He said he had a CHF mortgage with a Swiss bank (and Swiss interest rates) on the property in Mulhouse. So I guess it is possible, it probably helped that he worked for one of the banks though.

I recently asked UBS if it was possible to get a swiss franc based mortgage on a property in the UK. The response was that they sometimes provide "foreign" mortgages for people living in countries that border Switzerland. The "consultant" I spoke to said that he "had never heard of other cases" and that he would "get back to me" on whether they could provide a mortgage on a UK property....

The issue is fundamentally whether they can get an effective charge on the property in the event of default.

In my discussion with UBS, they certainly didnt have that capacity in respect of a UK property.

Altnernatives if you want to use the CH bank would be: secure the loan on other assets, or against a swiss property.

However in London there are plenty of mortgage lenders who will lend in FX on a UK property. I use Fortis bank, reasonably keen rate 1% over libor.

Daniel

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