A Pain in the Asset
It's been a long journey securing a mortgage in Thailand but we've had 2 offers now and all being well we'll get a good offer from another bank this week. Our mistake was putting all our faith in just one bank and letting them dictate their terms to us.
The Thai credit system is probably no more screwy than any other country but as I've got no experience to compare it with it's been a frustrating few months.
- We got rejected for a mortgage from one bank because Tik's credit card spending exceeded her quoted income. It was irrelevant that often she put her business expenses on the card and was reimbursed in cash, nor that she paid off my card and hers in full every month.
- We were made an offer by one bank of 1/2 the mortgage value, on the concession that if we paid of Tik's car loan (300,000 baht) we'd be offered a further 2,000,000 baht mortgage.
- My income wasn't of interest to one bank, the others merely verified it with a short email to my business partners in America.
That said, it looks like things are now moving. We had a busy few days applying to every other bank and now we've been made some offers we are now in the nice position of being able to play one lender off against the other.
We were expecting to move in September 1st however it'll probably be mid-November for us to have the letters signed, the money paid and the refurbishments made.
We're both quite excited about having a place of our own and Tik's awake until late mentally rearranging the layout.
