Which bank is the best to take a good deal for mortgage?
and is there any tricks or points to be take care?
The one that offers the best terms....
Try www.comparis.ch
visit 3 or 4 banks and talk to them for their offers, mortgage rate is related to your profile (financial).
best wishes
it's definitely a buyer's market right now.
Prepare all your documents and meet 4-5 of them. I spent some time with CRedit-Suisse, UBS, Postfinance, AXA-Winterthur:
- CS and UBS have very professionnel people but they are among the "expensive" mortgage rates.
- Postfinance: good rates but complex process to get an appointment and counselors are not always very aware of the mortgage details
- AXA Winterthur: very good rates and people.
It's worth investing some time in understanding the different possibilities/limits in mortgage credit. If you have a good risk profile, you have then a good negotiation leverage. If you put your salary account or 3rd pilar account in same bank then you have even a higher negotiation leverage.
I found The site Comparis and VZ very useful.
PS: Insurances like AXA.Winterthur usually do not finance house building projects, they prefer buying already built houses.
We went with PostFinance, they were the most helpful and transparent, and had the lowest rates too. We had also spoken to UBS, Valiant, Raiffeisen and Fribourg cantonale bank. UBS were the only ones who would have let us pledge, rather than cash, some of our pension, but it didn't "feel" right with them. The others were much of a muchness and the counsellors in BCF and Valiant were very good and very knowledgeable.
So I went through the Comparis mortgage market (CHF 290 refundable upon completion) and got the following quotes for a 6 year fixed rate mortgage with 20% down. The figure unless otherwise stated is for both the mortgage 1 and mortgage 2 (amortisation i.e. the bit that eventually gets paid off).
BPS (Suisse) 2.5%
Bank Coop 2.4%
money-net.ch 2.3% (mortgage 1) 2.25% variable (mortgage 2)
Baloise Bank SoBa 2.55%
Axa Wintherthur 2.41 %
Regiobank Solothurn 2.45% (mortgage 1) 2.3% (mortgage 2)
Migros Bank 2.475%
Basler Kantonbank 2.33%
Post Finance 2.65%
Helvetica Versicherungen 2.45% (mortgage 1) 3.2% (mortgage 2)
UBS 2.7%
Hope someone finds the info helpful, its certainly saved me a lot of legwork.
And one of our mortgages is on a flex roll over 3mths at 1.45% with CS, its a good product in these times as there is little risk its only for 3 mths at a time
I'm no financial wiz, but something tells me that interest rates will only go up, so it seems to make sense to fix something now before they do. Although the Libor rate looks very attractive, if interest rates do spike you can obviously pull out, but will you still be able to find a decent fixed rate deal?
You are completely right and that's the risk you take, we have it on a small amount of our mortgage so our risk is low.
buddy of mine went with ZKB and got decent rate and also had to put down 15%. they even allowed him to borrow a bit over the loan amount
been reading about this and there is definitely a prediction that rates will start increasing Q3 and on. I heard that when the banks analyze your application they look to see if you can pay the mortgage rates even if rates would hit the worse case scenario which is about 5% based on the past.
As much as I wouldn't mind my own flat here in CH I do not feel secure enough about the job market to makes such move...but that's OT
Mea culpa Something I should have mentioned is the fact that some of those are preferential rates offered if you move your current account to the lending bank, or buy some sort of insurance products off them. Basel Kantonalbank (BKB) have offered me a rate of 2.33 % (with additional business) or 2.48% (without additional business). Not sure how negotiable they would be, but in my case leaving UBS wouldn't be a huge deal... I could live with a BKB account
It all depends how long it takes to go up though. I would rather have the advantage of not paying the extra "insurance" cost of the fixed rate now whilst rates are low, and if/when rates do rise I accept I will take the hit.
Of course this all depends on your situation. My flexible mortgage through UBS is only costing me 1.3% at the moment (3 month LIBOR) but if it goes up to even 4-5% times it would make things hard but I wouldn't lose my flat. If you are already tight on what you can afford then fixing makes sense, and you accept the extra cost now for the potential security later.
My personal view is that rates will take some time to creep up, and even then being Switzerland it seems likely to me that they are not going to get up above the 4-5% level in the near to medium term
For reference, the rates have not been above 4% since 1995:
Can you please tell me the rates in PostFinance?
Thank you so much!
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You bleed just to know you're alive...
We have mortgages on two properties with ZKB. We found them to be very competitive and very accommodating. We have always banked with UBS, but despite the fact that we are told we are "preferential clients" they weren't prepared to negotiate at all, plus their rates were much higher than ZKB.
ZKB were quite the reverse, totally flexible on every aspect. They also made us feel that our business was valuable to them (and continue to do so).
http://www.postfinance.ch/pf/content...rod/mortg.html
We have a 2 year fixed rate at 1.35%. We could have taken a longer term, but decided to go with the shorter to have a little more initial cash to invest in setting up the new place; furniture, decorating etc.
Why don't you just go on line and do it for yourself. alternatively go to a post office and ask, it's really so simple
er... silly question maybe - but is 10 years really the longest term normally available? (20-30 year mortgages are the norm 'back home' so it took me by surprise.)
Say you had 20% down, plus 33% of gross income for 10 years - you're talking a house that only costs around four years' salary. What do first-time buyers normally do, save up for 20 years beforehand to make a huge down payment?
One way of doing your mortgage is to split it the main mortgage in to divide it into 3 parts. For example if you you Sfr 900k on mortgage "split" it into 3 and have 1/3rd on fixed at 4 or 5 years, 1/3rs fixed for 10 years and 1/3rd either fixed or floating, as you wish.
The big advantage is that you can iron out any increases in the rates and any decrease won't depress you so much as the fixed terms come to an end at different periods, so if the rate moves from 2% to 6% you only get hit on 1/3rd of your mortgage, similar if the rate decreases.
At present rates are very low and unlikely to go much lower, in any case to hit the absolute bottom is as hard as hitting the absolute top.
With a fully fixed mortgage, big advantages to my mind are you don't need to contiunualy check if the floating rate is moving and get all sweaty if you see a 0.10% rise AND you know exactly what you pay each month and for how long.
The mortgage term may be for 10 years, but you don't have to pay off everything in that time. In fact, the way it works as explained to me by the UBS man is:
20% deposit, so 80% mortgage.
When your fixed term deal ends in 5 or 10 years time, you simply negotiate a new mortgage deal at the rates applicable at that point.
For first 15 years, you pay interest plus 1% of capital per year, so by year 15 you own 35% and have a 65% mortgage. At that point, they let you keep paying interest only for as long as you want, so no requirement to continue paying capital if you don't want.
To compare to the UK, the mortgage may be for 20 or 25 years, but often it is fixed rate for a certain period, and you would normally expect to renegotiate the mortgage several times over the years.