French mortgage borrowers must wait 10 full days after receiving a loan offer before accepting it, with the count beginning the following day. The DGCCRF, France’s consumer-protection authority, sets out that rule in its guidance on mortgage documents. That pause is useful. A property purchase can make a buyer surprisingly impatient with the very paperwork that determines what the home will cost to finance.
For a non-resident buying in the French Alps, the sensible use of those days is to compare the whole offer against a genuinely comparable alternative. A lower advertised interest rate is a promising starting point. It is not a finished calculation. Fees, payment timing, required services and the amount of cash left after completion can change the decision.
This is a method for reading offers, using official guidance checked on 30 September 2026. It contains no live mortgage quotations or forecast of rates. The numerical examples are deliberately hypothetical, and none represents terms available to a particular buyer.
Give both banks the same purchase
Start by making the comparison boring. Send each lender the same purchase price, deposit, requested loan amount, term, ownership structure and intended use. Explain that it is a second home and say if you plan to let it. Include your country of residence and the currencies in which you receive income. A beautifully priced proposal for a different borrower or a different project is stationery.
Ask each lender to identify assumptions still awaiting approval. There is a practical difference between an indicative calculation based on a short conversation and a personalised offer based on the documents the bank has examined. Put the document date and its stage at the top of your comparison sheet. Avoid giving an early estimate the authority of a final contract.
Now check the principal and term line by line. A smaller monthly payment achieved by borrowing less is partly the result of using more of your savings. A smaller payment achieved by borrowing for longer has a different trade-off. Neither tells you, on its own, which bank has offered better value. Ask for a second calculation on identical assumptions before ranking them.
Read the TAEG, then read what feeds it
The taux annuel effectif global, or TAEG, brings qualifying borrowing costs into an annual percentage. The Economy Ministry’s explanation includes interest and costs required to obtain the credit or its advertised terms, such as relevant fees, compulsory insurance and guarantees. This is why comparing the nominal interest rate alone leaves out part of the bill.
Request the itemised inputs behind each TAEG. Which insurance premium was used? Which guarantee cost? Is a broker’s fee included? Does a required account generate charges? The useful response is a figure linked to a document, rather than a reassuring description of a banking package. If something is compulsory for the quoted terms, ask the lender to explain how it has been treated.
Keep optional spending separately visible. A service you freely choose can still cost money even if it does not belong in the regulatory calculation. Conversely, do not add an included fee again when building your own cash budget. It helps to mark every line as included in the lender’s calculation, additional, or awaiting clarification.
The standardised European information sheet, known as the FISE, gives this exercise a common structure. Put both sheets beside each other and use their headings. You are checking assumptions as well as percentages; identical labels do not guarantee identical inputs.
A small monthly difference needs a second sum
Consider a simplified illustration in which two otherwise comparable proposals differ by €25 a month. Over 20 years, or 240 monthly payments, that is €6,000. If the proposal with the lower monthly outlay also demands €3,000 more upfront, the simple undiscounted difference across the full period is €3,000. That arithmetic is easy. Deciding whether it describes the actual offers takes more care.
For this illustration, the monthly difference must include the same cost categories, remain constant throughout, and apply to equal principal and repayment terms. The calculation ignores the time value of money and assumes the borrower keeps the loan for its full life. It is not a TAEG calculation, a mortgage quotation or a prediction of savings.
At the same €25 monthly difference, the additional upfront €3,000 takes 120 months to recover through those lower payments alone. A buyer who expects to change the borrowing arrangements much sooner should therefore ask for a comparison at that earlier date. Include the outstanding balance and all relevant contractual costs, rather than stopping at the monthly saving.
This is a useful conversation to have with the lender: show me the cash paid and capital still owed at my chosen review date. The cheapest-looking monthly line may be perfectly good. It simply deserves to be tested against the way you expect to own the property.
Separate the loan bill from the purchase budget
The mortgage comparison cannot replace a completion budget. The Economy Ministry’s mortgage overview distinguishes the interest rate, overall borrowing cost and security arrangements. For your own planning, keep the acquisition costs, furnishing and initial running cash alongside the financing figures, with the notaire and lender confirming their respective amounts.
A new-build apartment and a resale should have separate budgets. Do not transfer acquisition-cost assumptions or payment dates from one to the other merely because their advertised prices are similar. For a resale, work from the particular sale and its completion statement. For an off-plan purchase, ask for the contractual payment schedule and the lender’s proposed release of funds against it.
Then ask what you pay during any staged-release period: interest, insurance, fees and capital, with dates and assumptions. Request an illustration if the programme runs later than planned. These are questions for the actual contract and lender, not figures to borrow from a neighbouring development’s brochure.
DOMOSNO’s current new-build selection can help organise a property shortlist, but an advertised property price is not a financing approval. Keep the property specification, sale terms and loan proposal together so that a change in one prompts a check of the others.
Your euro payment still has a home-currency cost
A fixed payment in euros gives you a clear euro obligation. It does not fix the cost of supplying those euros from sterling or another currency. This matters especially when the second home is paid for from salary, dividends or pensions received outside the euro area. Build the currency conversion into your household exercise, separately from the bank’s loan comparison.
For a purely arithmetic stress test, suppose a monthly euro obligation currently costs 1,000 units of your home currency to fund. If each euro subsequently costs 10% more in that currency, the same obligation costs 1,100 units before transfer charges. This is a scenario, not an exchange-rate forecast or an assertion that the euro itself has moved by a particular percentage.
Repeat the exercise for the deposit and other payments still to come. A comfortable monthly budget can coexist with an awkward large transfer at completion. Ask the lender when it requires your contribution, and identify which funds are already held in euros. Keep a written record of conversion fees and the exchange rate actually offered.
Do not let hoped-for rental receipts silently fill a gap in this exercise. Test whether you can fund the contractual payments from resources you control, then assess the letting plan separately. A bank’s willingness to lend and your comfort with the resulting cash demands are different decisions.
Use the waiting period as a document check
The lender must maintain its offer for at least 30 days from receipt, according to Service Public’s mortgage procedure. That minimum validity and the reflection period serve different purposes. Record the receipt date, first permitted acceptance date and offer expiry; ask the lender to confirm the procedure before making travel or signing plans.
Use the interval to reconcile the offer, FISE, repayment schedule and insurance documents. Names, borrowing amount, term and property details should describe the same transaction. If an earlier email promised something useful, find it in the binding paperwork or obtain a clear written explanation. Keep the answers with the offer, rather than scattered across a phone and several inboxes.
Also distinguish affordability from the legal pricing ceiling. The Banque de France explains that the taux d’usure is the maximum permitted rate, assessed using the TAEG for the relevant loan category. Being below that ceiling does not establish that an offer is competitive or comfortable for your household. Ask the lender to identify the applicable category and threshold when it issues the offer.
Choose the offer you can explain back
A useful final comparison fits on one page: amount borrowed, money required upfront, monthly outlay, total scheduled cost, important dates and unresolved conditions. Keep the detailed documents behind it. If the preferred offer wins only because a cost remains unknown, it has not won yet.
Ask each lender to explain any meaningful difference you cannot reconcile. Perhaps the insurance assumptions differ; perhaps a fee arrives at a different point; perhaps you have compared different repayment schedules. Resolve those differences before accepting, with qualified advice where your residence, ownership structure or contract requires it.
The objective is a loan whose numbers and obligations make sense alongside the home you want to buy. Being able to explain why you chose it, without reciting the headline rate, is a useful final test.
If you are narrowing an Alpine property shortlist, speak to DOMOSNO about the homes and their purchase schedules, then ask your lender or mortgage adviser to price the same documented project.
