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.