Home Loans for Foreigners

We bought it just as they were finishing.

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@Neuromancer @Wai
Glad to hear some others were able to get the house in both their names.
We even talked to a few banks with the same result. Hopefully others will not have the same experience as me

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I would be very interested to hear if a foreigner only couple or single person has ever successfully gotten a mortgage in Taiwan without a guarantor.

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Yes, I know several non-taiwanese who own one or more properties with mortgages on them.

Mortgages for foreigners seem to be a bit like credit cards for foreigners, there is a mistaken belief they are hard to come by.

I went to HSBC to open a bank account the other week, and applied for a credit card the same time and they had no issue with my getting a credit card as well. I walked out from there within 25 minutes with all the paper work done, and the cards arrived in the mail a week or so later.

ah sweet times when you could buy a home for 5 mil

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Wow, did you not have to put a large deposit down?
I went to HSBC at least twice and was told that to even open an international account there you need to deposit 100,000 USD. At the time I was looking at investment/retirement savings

That’s funny, they gave you a huge loan and then were telling you you can’t open a bank account.

Shit service, shit training , shit professionalism.

I had a similar situation in getting a personal loan here. In the end just one bank offered me one and I had a local guarantor . No collateral. 2.99% .

For loans in general they basically break down as to if you have collateral or not . They prefer Taiwan property owned by Taiwanese as collateral (it’s easy for them to rate the value). The reason why you didn’t get lowest rate is probably due to collateral ?

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I opened an account there about 6 'years ago. They really discouraged me from actually opening the account. They seem to only want very high value clients and ANZ bank also tried to get me to leave. If you insist you want the account they will do it.

As far as mortgages most banks I do business with said it wouldnt be an issue, only hillbilly Taichung bank told me absolute not for foreigners. All else were willing to let me try to apply. However I have credit cards with those same banks for years so I bet that helps when I asked.

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Thanks for sharing! you made some good points that I had not thought to look out for.

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I should clarify: I did inherit land in Taiwan previously under my name and I still have it. This could have made a difference, but the interesting thing is the bank mortgage salespeople all said they didn’t care about it and none wanted to see the proof of ownership, so I originally didn’t present it. All of them assumed that with my work income, it shouldn’t be needed. After having issues, I decided to just include it in my last application which was successful. I actually got approved for a 50% mortgage without including the land info originally and not being able to pick up the call for the loan manager’s call to ask questions. I totally botched it, but still got some form of loan. To be honest, with interest rates this low, I think the banks here truly want to sell mortgages fast and at volume, so it’s possible they don’t care about collateral if you can show other things (or they want local collateral as proof you won’t flee the country).

I really think the salespeople oftentimes don’t know how the evaluation process works. Especially for uncommon cases. In other words, yes, it turns out salespeople are full of --it everywhere you go around the world (apologies to salespeople, I’m 90% kidding).

For opening the basic bank account, the service could have been better, but I’m a statistically unusual person here and I went to a branch that probably has literally never dealt with a case like mine before. Also, the department that does loans in the bank is separate from general banking, and the loan people don’t operate in a customer-facing office. So basically you’re walking into a random bank branch and telling them things that they have little understanding about and they’re thinking “oh god why our branch how the heck am I going to make this work I had so much stuff I had to get done today.” I can rant for days about prejudice everywhere in the world, but in this case I think it’s slightly more complicated. There are certainly much clearer cases of prejudice to be found in the world compared to this. Anyway I’ve never had someone apologize to me like that – I was shocked and thought they came to ask me for some additional required document at first. An honest apology can make a big difference to me.

Based on my experience, my feeling is that the most important aspects are:

  • you have enough for a down payment
  • you have a stable income high enough for the monthly payments and other living expenses
  • you have been in the country for a long time and ideally have a long-term visa without an expiration period (in my case I probably got past this by showing I have family history and land ties here and a local passport)
  • you can understand and sign paperwork in Chinese and reply to phone questions in Chinese/Taiwanese (I’m assuming this part – maybe some can do English)

If the above are not possible to satisfy, bringing in a guarantor who is a direct relative (including spouse) and a local citizen of Taiwan and who themselves can satisfy the above can help you meet the requirements.

So, I would recommend not thinking about it as “it’s easy/hard/impossible for foreigners to get a mortgage” as this may be too simplified. Rather, I suggest thinking of this scenario as: there is generally no law against a mortgage for a personal home for a foreign buyer in most cases, and the degree of difficulty will mostly depend on the factors I listed above (and possibly others I may have overlooked, but I spent months on this) because the banks need to do risk analysis before approving the financial commitment from their side.

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Great info. I also really like your username.

c3ae129a259ac35eadba8d469b1c2928

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multipass.

This just makes a massive difference in reality. The only thing that most of the banks asked me when I was looking for a personal loan was could I put local guarantors and local collateral (preferably property in the cities…They were snobby about farmland which is more difficult for them to assess). Also all banks except one refused me point blank after initial assessment . FOREIGNER not applicable (many state in their T&Cs although not all)…including my salary bank of six years where I had SUBSTANTIAL savings and cc with good credit history .

The bank that offered me a loan (China trust ) did check my bank balance and savings too. Still needed that local guarantor.

But overall…Agreed for mortgages it’s certainly much more feasible to get one as a foreigner here, and the rate of interest is actually more related to being a collateralized loan or not. To get those super low rates…You need to put up collateral. The guy above got forced to sign over the property to his wife. Very not cool in my book.

Actually I think they stiffed you on the interest rate and they still owe you an apology , because you put up collateral (as Taiwanese have told you). They are greedy muthertruckers.

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The average banks service here is absolutely pathetic (@MalcolmReynolds :grin:) . I can’t stress how poor it is even though they have many people sitting around not doing much (nowhere in the world has has many humans left in a bank branch than Taiwan surely ). You literally just have to walk them through things and have an amazing EQ to deal with them . 20 years history. Fairly good Chinese, reading and speaking .

You can’t tell people (going on their looks often) that they aren’t entitled to something if you are a bloody security guard at a bank! This is what happened to you and similar had happened to me.

Then the amount of repetitive paperwork that you have to sign ito get stuff done is unbelievably bad. On top of it all get charge high fees for international transactions and stock trading.

Yep time for a good rant. :grin:

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I agree that duration residing in the country matters a lot.

I agree that it is prejudicial to decide if someone should have different rights or services rendered based on what they look like, and I think that is the definition of stereotyping.

I agree the service of the frontline security person or greeter at the bank may not be highly proficient in banking matters, similar to how a WalMart greeter may not understand the nuances of the supply chain and logistics of the WalMart business.

The thing is, even after I showed them my Taiwan passport and TARC and explained that I already was approved for a mortgage from their specific bank, those people still said it wasn’t possible to help me open a bank account. So, I don’t know what portion of this is prejudice and what portion is lack of competence or ability to know and execute SOPs. In any case, as it escalated the bank corrected it, so the institution itself is not prejudicial, but maybe some workers within the bank (not all) are.

Actually I think they stiffed you on the interest rate and they still owe you an apology , because you put up collateral (as Taiwanese have told you). They are greedy muthertruckers.

Maybe I’ll bring you to my next negotiation. However, from my perspective, I find it somewhat amazing that I got a loan considering when I applied I was still preparing to move here and was only flying over for 1-2 weeks at a time last year, just a few times. Also, basically all of my financial info in another country. Although TARCs can be renewed, they generally have an expiration date of 3 years. Also, I haven’t done military service yet and it’s something I’ll have to think about. I’m not sure they even considered that.

Then again, I find it strange that children of Taiwanese people who have been in Taiwan for multiple generations aren’t automatically given full voting and household registration rights.

Overall, I’m happy with the experience and I was able to achieve my goal of buying the home I wanted with a better mortgage than I expected. If those negative aspects outweighed the positive ones, I wouldn’t make the choice to go through with the process.

Last note:

because you put up collateral (as Taiwanese have told you). They are greedy muthertruckers.

I hope the scope of this is referring to the people in the bank who were incorrect or unfair. My family members here are certainly not this way, and I think many Taiwanese people are not, including myself.

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They might of taken you more as a local through your passport, Taiwanese ties, language ability and family property holding. The local property holding was the key most likely. Did you have a local guarantor and you put up that collateral ?
By the way I appreciate your very reasoned argument and description of the loan process.
In reality having lived and worked and raised a family here over twenty years I am far more local than you but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

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Yea, I think it’s possible, but actually some of the mortgage teams seemed less happy to find that the TARC had an expiration compared to a permanent ARC that has no expiration. They seemed to feel that a permanent ARC with local employment would be more valuable to prove I wasn’t going to flee the country with the money, compared to me showing up with just a handful of weeks within the country on my TARC.

I think the aspects I mentioned about a resident permit with expiration, barely any time formally residing under that permit, and little local financial info are the main reasons my interest rate was slightly higher.

In reality having lived and worked and raised a family here over wenty years I am far more local than you but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

Perhaps, yes. But there may be some things you don’t know about my life and experience and family history that may be more local in other aspects. I don’t know if it’s a 1:1 comparison.

I haven’t raised a family here, but neither has the president. I wasn’t born here, but neither was the previous president. I was born into and raised in a Taiwanese family though.

If you feel you are local from your experiences, I support that idea and I think you should be treated as local if you have significant reasons, which it sounds like you do.

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7 posts were split to a new topic: “Local” identity debate (2020 edition)

I am no fan of Taiwanese banking, and that’s putting it lightly, but at least I’ve never been arrested for fraud based on my ethnicity.

Just sayin’.

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Hmm, I think it was so that their premiere account(the “best one”) had a minimum balance of 3mil twd. But, the main benefit of that what I could see was a multi currency atm card, which is kind of useless now as we can’t travel.

The credit card I wanted(for the points) required an account with 700k balance, so I just deposited that.