Studio facing the sea, chalet at the foot of the slopes or farmhouse with a view of the hills: second homes are popular. They accounted for 7% of transactions made in 2021 by the Century 21 network, which is 6.1% more than the previous year.
In the midst of a pandemic, many buyers gave in to the need for space and nature. Their search for a mortgage is no simpler than for a principal residence, far from it. The debt ratio must, again, pass under the Caudines forks of the High Council for Financial Stability (HCSF), that is to say remain below 35%.
“Banks benefit from a margin of maneuver on 20% of their files, which can exceed this debt ratio of 35%, but these must relate to the purchase of a main residence in 80% of cases”, recalls Sandrine Allonier, the director of studies of Vousfinancer. Exemptions are therefore much rarer for second homes and rental properties.
Redeem and renegotiate
Another difficulty is that buyers of a country house are often – but not always, it is true – already in debt for their principal residence. The probability of approaching the 35% rate is therefore high, since the latter applies to all loans repaid by the borrower. “You have to look at the file as a whole, we cannot limit ourselves to offering only a loan for the second home”confirms Olivier Lendrevie, president of the broker Cafpi.
The right solution is sometimes to buy back the loan linked to the main residence to renegotiate the rate and revise its monthly payment downwards. This operation releases an additional debt capacity that can be devoted to the financing of the second home.
Take a couple who took out a loan of 200,000 euros, in 2009, for their main residence and renegotiated it in 2019 at 1.5% over fifteen years, i.e. a monthly payment of 714 euros insurance included. He therefore has 106,000 euros left to repay. He now wants to borrow an additional 200,000 euros to afford a country house. The bank could offer him a second loan at 1.25% over twenty years, i.e. a monthly payment of 1,067 euros, insurance included.
The sum of the two monthly payments, however, reaches 1,781 euros, which increases the couple’s debt ratio to just above 35%, since it displays 5,000 euros of net monthly income. “The solution is to combine the two loans: he has to borrow a total of 306,000 euros at 2.40% insurance included. The monthly payment in this case amounts to 1,608 euros over twenty years, for a debt ratio this time limited to 32%”calculates Maël Bernier, spokesperson for Meilleurtaux.
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