Is your mortgage rate blocked for the duration of the investigation of your file? No, replies the Minister of the Economy, who recalls, however, that a period of one month does exist once the offer has been made by the bank.
If you’ve recently met with your bank adviser or a broker to put together a file to obtain a mortgage, you know it: it can take time. However, credit rates are rising inexorably, month after month, or even every 15 days depending on the banking establishment.
Faced with an increasing cost of resources, banks are becoming more and more cautious about granting credit. Your file will be carefully examined. The problem is that the rates continue to climb during the investigation of your file. It is not uncommon then to be offered 3.30% over 20 years during the first appointment with the bank adviser, but to discover a rate of 3.40% on the said offer.
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Is this method legal? Wondering about the practices of certain banking establishments which increase the interest rate of a loan during the investigation of a file, the Renaissance MP Lionel Causse therefore asked the question last January to the Minister of the Economy.
In a reply published on May 16 to the Official newspaper, Bruno Le Maire explains that sending the offer to the future borrower obliges the lender to maintain the conditions that this offer indicates, in particular the annual effective annual rate which corresponds to the interest rate fixed by the bank or credit institution. Clearly, once the offer made by the bank and received by the future borrower, the rate is blocked for 30 days, under thearticle L. 313-34 of the Consumer Code. As a reminder, the borrower must for his part observe a period of 10 days before being able to accept the offer.
A rate locked only once the offer has been placed
However, and this is where the problem lies, as long as the lender has not finalized the instruction of the file, the simulations carried out upstream have only an indicative value and cannot be assimilated to a contractual commitment, can we read in the answer to the Official newspaper. While the processing time sometimes requires a certain delay depending on the individual situation of the loan applicant, the stock of files pending and the economic situation, the bank is not required to block the rate.
Faced with this situation, the government recalls that nothing prevents the candidate for the loan from competing to request a loan from another bank in order to choose the most advantageous offer.
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