Hi @intercitydisco ,
I wrote about this a bit in another thread. You may find these 2 comments helpful:
Comment 1:
Comment 2:
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Feel free to let me know if you have any specific questions. I can also refer you to the loan/mortgage person at the bank that I worked with, and also another that I got approved with but didn’t move forward with.
Overall my main tips are:
- Prepare as much supporting financial info as possible, no matter what the mortgage salesperson says. Land, stocks, retirement savings, etc.
- Being able to pick up the phone and answer the questions accurately when your application is being reviewed is very important.
- If you have a direct relative in Taiwan like parent, spouse, grandparent, or sibling, who can financially qualify as your 保證人，it seems like that could help a lot (but I didn’t end up needing to go that far)
- Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get the loan you want from the first bank. Try at least a few different ones. 富邦銀行，星展 and 富邦人壽 were all willing to at least let me apply and not reject me immediately. Despite my being really poorly prepared and too busy to pick up calls, two still approved me – 1 for the loan I wanted. Many banks simply will not handle this type of case at all, for various reasons.
- Remember that the mortgage salesperson doesn’t handle the approval process, so they often don’t 100% know what they’re talking about. Some mortgage salespeople will say you can easily get the loan, but don’t really understand the requirements clearly.
- Be prepared for the possibility that you’ll only get approved for a smaller loan than you were needing to buy the home and therefore need to put down more cash to go through with the purchase.
- Before signing an agreement to buy a home (required before applying for the mortgage loan to pay for it), ask the seller if the contract has any penalty if you need to back out due specifically to not getting approved for a high enough mortgage (and check the contract yourself also). The point here is: if you can’t get approved by any bank, and if the contract has a penalty for backing out of the house purchase agreement, the seller might demand that you pay them a bunch of money. I’m not sure how legally enforceable that is. Luckily I didn’t get that far into a problematic situation.
- Before signing an agreement to buy a home, talk to the loan salespeople at the banks first to get familiar with the process and their thinking. Come to them with a few examples of properties you’re considering and the prices to get their feedback based on your basic financial stats like income and assets.
- Don’t expect things to go perfectly smoothly. Be patient and make sure you do everything you can to help facilitate the process. Expect to spend a lot of time explaining yourself to various people.
- Finally, if you’re planning to get a 身份證 in a year or two, you might want to consider just renting until you get that. Rent is cheap in Taiwan, and buying later with that 身份證 seems like it would be a lot easier, unless you’re going to be less financially able to support the loan in that situation.
Hopefully that helps, but let me know if you need other information.