Has anyone successfully remortgaged a PS property in Poland yet?

I have a one-bed apartment in the Marina development in Warsaw, which, on paper, has done very well. I need to raise a mortgage by October this year on a studio in MyDream - Romania.

I am not sure I fancy the mortgage process in Romania (although I don't know much about it yet), and since the Romanian deal is in Euro, the prospect of financing from the UK is not appealing right now.

Although the Marina apartment is heavilly cash negative (and likley to be so for a very long time), it might be easier to raise the cash (or some of it) in Poland and buy the Romanian property outright, rather than jump through hoops chasing a Romanian mortgage.

I have not thought too deeply about the pros and cons, so I would appreciate any advice, especially from anyone who has actually remortaged in Poland.

I am not a very experienced investor, but have bought into 4 PS deals, so this is new territory for me. But this is the way it is supposed to work is'nt it ? refinance one place to buy the next.

Hi Mike,

I haven't remortgaged and don't know if you can or not, but I'm in the middle of a first Polish application and find it very cumbersome. One of the main problems I've realised is that your documents (original bank accounts etc) will be out of your hands for a very long time while you apply to just one broker, unless there's a way around this I haven't thought of.

I have two other flats completing this time next year (Poland again and Bratislava) and I intend to sell a flat in the UK to fund these. This will be a lot simpler, cheaper and will save a lot of fees and hassle.

Based on my so far limited experience I would say if you're going down the mortgage route be extremely organised, think ahead and make sure you can provide all docs in good time - there are lots of little bits that have tripped me up such as getting a bank account open (requires forms notarised and apostilled which can take a long time) etc.

I've personally swung from the mortgage route to funding outright and having the nice rental income with less stress...

Hope that helps...

maybe I can help out here ...

Regarding applying for a mortgage loan in Romania we (as a broker) only need documents in electronic format (PDF preferably) and no documentation whatsoever needs to be translated in the Romanian language (!) or legalized in the country of origin. This saves a lot of time, money and effort

Current rates in Romania are not that bad regarding mortgages in EURO (4,95%) or Swiss Francs (3,95%) and even the variable rates after 6 months are acceptable.

In case you need more information, do not hesitate to contact me

Stefan
Easy Credit (mortgage broker)
Bucharest, Romania
+40 72 60 844 60

Rednet in Poland also only required scans of bank accounts/ID etc.. so none of my personal docs had to be sent off anywhere. Although i would also agree - keep everything organised! I don't receive bank statements and just view my accounts online, but they(Barclays) only keep 3 months of statements and I had to pay and wait a long time for them to send me more. I'm now printing and scanning my account statements each month so everything's ready to send off for the next mortgage application.
Hope you can sort out your remortgaging- sorry can't help on that. I too am a beginner (hence my 1 star!) but would be interested to hear responses.

Hi Neil,

thanks for responding . I know the Polish mortgage application process all too well, having been through the mill as one of the "pioneers" in Poland.

However, I would expect remortgaging to be more straight forward, and I am interrested in general opinions as to whether it would be a good idea or not as a strategy to grow a portfolio which is now stricktly limited by cashflow negative investments in Poland, Czech, and Cyprus.

Hello Stefan,

Thanks for the info. I will of course be looking into a Romanian mortgage as well.

My completion is around October. How long will I need to allow for the application process in Romania ? 3 months - or more ?

I will get in touch.

Mike

Hello Mike,

There are 5 stages when trying to obtain a mortgage in Romania

1) financial approval (based on income / client profile)
2) legal clearance of property papers
3) evaluation of the property
4) final approval
5) signing the mortgage/loan contract

The following applies to mortgages in Romania (using Easy Credit)

1) financial approval

a) 1-2 days in case of mortgages < 100.000 EURO
b) 2-4 days in case of mortgages between 100.001 - 200.000 EURO
c) 4-6 days in case of mortgages between 200.001 - 499.999 EURO
d) 6-8 days in case of mortgages surpassing 500.000 EURO (signed off by the CEO
of the bank personally!)

2) Legal clearance of property papers - maximum 2 days

3) Evaluation - maximum 2 days

4) Final approval based on evaluation - maximum 1-2 days

5) Signing the mortgage/loan contract - 30 minutes (at the bank)

In this case (by using a broker) , it won't take 3 months at all ... we're talking rather between 6 and 12 working days in case all documents are correctly forwarded to the broker by e-mail.

For instance: We've cleared a mortgage recently for a US citizen with income from the US buying property in Romania using a 185.000 EURO mortgage ... from depositing the mortgage file for the client to signing the actual contract, it took us 6 working days (!) ... (I have to say this is an exception as it normally takes a few days more....)


In case you need any additional information, do not hesitate to contact me

Today I was informed, after 6 weeks, that my application for a remortgage of a unit in the Metro development could not proceed because of legal difficulties.

This is particularly annoying as the only reason it became a remortgage was 8 months of trying to get a mortgage came to nothing (because, despite many initial assurances that the application would be approved, the banks appear unable to offset other mortgages against rental income - so I you have a BTL portfolio all your mortgages count as expenditure and your rental income is ignored) and I had to raise finance in the UK.

So back to the original question, has anyone actually managed to obtain a remortgage in Poland and if so please could you post details of the bank/broker involved.

Regards

Alan











Has anyone manged to achieve this.