Given the budget involved, it is rare to be able to buy a house or an apartment with cash. To achieve this, you must apply for a mortgage. But how to choose the most advantageous? For this, it is necessary to compare the offers and to define objective criteria, specific to guide your choice.
Summary
Compare credit offers
Your bank can make you a mortgage loan proposal. Even if you trust their services, it is better not to settle for just one offer. Only the comparison of several proposals will allow you to identify the most interesting for you.
For this, it is possible to study each of the offers made to you. However, the operation can be long and tedious. Unless you are an expert on the subject, some subtleties may also escape you.
Another solution is to entrust the operation to a mortgage broker. This professional will very quickly be able to identify the proposal that best meets your expectations.
Finally, the use of an online comparator can be of great service to you. Based on the information provided, this mortgage comparator selects for you, in a few moments, the most interesting offer. It also calculates, with great precision, your borrowing capacity and the amount of your monthly payments.
Essential criteria
To retain the best mortgage offer, your attention must first be focused on this essential element which is the real estate interest rate. It is through him that you pay your creditor.
It is determined according to various parameters, such as the duration of the loan, the specific situation of the borrower or even market conditions. In this area, each bank also designs its own policy.
To profitably compare credit offers, you must of course check the amount of the rate offered by each bank. But it should also be checked whether the interest rate is fixed or variable.
There are actually several types of mortgage interest rates. The one that should hold your attention the most is the annual percentage rate. Only this APR allows you to know what your credit will really cost you. Its calculation includes all ancillary costs.
To usefully compare mortgage offers, other essential factors must be taken into account. These include the term of the loan and the amount of monthly payments you are able to pay. On all these points, and many others, you will find useful and up-to-date information on the immoz.info site.
Additional charges
These costs increase the cost of your credit and explain why the APR is higher than the simple interest rate.
A relevant comparison of mortgage offers must therefore take into account these additional costs. First, you must take out borrower insurance. Even if it is not mandatory, the lending institution will ask you to provide it. It guarantees the payment of the monthly installments even if certain circumstances no longer allow you to pay them.
Security fees, such as the deposit or the mortgage, play a somewhat similar role. The bank will also charge administration fees, which are also taken into account in the cost of credit.
You may be planning, from the start, to repay all or part of the remaining monthly payments earlier than expected. This early repayment may result in the payment of specific penalties, set by the bank. Finally, do not forget the commission of the broker if you use his services.
It is only by taking into account all of these additional costs that you will have a precise idea of the cost of your mortgage.
Interesting options
To achieve a satisfactory result, your comparison of mortgage offers must also take into account another element. It is a question of identifying, in this case, which are the banks which present certain options, advantageous for you, and under what conditions they are offered.
In this regard, the most interesting option is that which provides for flexible credit. If you do not have regular income or if your resources must increase or decrease for a while, this option allows you to increase or reduce your monthly payments.
Check, for each bank, the additional cost induced by this possibility. The moment when the option can be activated, as well as the minimum time between each modification request, are other elements to check before choosing your credit offer.
This option can also allow you to suspend the payment of your installments for a certain period, generally quite short. In the event of temporary cash flow problems, this option can be very useful to you. It is up to you to assess the specific conditions which govern, for each bank, this postponement of deadlines.
Some banks offer you, for example, a suspension of the payment of the capital, others accept the postponement of the payment of the capital as well as interest.
Read also: Real estate credit: are the offers of online banks still as attractive?