Your bank at home will not finance a house in Spain. That is not a credit problem.
Dutch and Belgian buyers now make up the largest group of non-resident purchasers in Spain — and most of them arrive with the same misunderstanding: that the mortgage can simply come from home. It cannot. Here is how the two sides actually fit together.
Why the bank at home says no
A Dutch or Belgian lender secures its loan against a property inside its own jurisdiction. A house in Alicante or on the Costa del Sol lies outside it — different land registry, different enforcement, different valuation regime. It is not that your income is insufficient. It is that the collateral is in the wrong country.
What your bank at home can do is lend against the property you already own there. What it will not do is take a Spanish property as security. That distinction decides everything that follows.
Either you raise the equity at home — or you finance in Spain
- Route 1 — equity from home, financing in Spain. You raise capital against your existing property in the Netherlands or Belgium (your own bank does this; we do not arrange it outside Germany, see below), and we finance the Spanish side on top. This is the strongest position: more cash in hand means a smaller Spanish loan and a better structure.
- Route 2 — Spanish mortgage as a non-resident. Financing against the Spanish property itself, typically up to 70 % of the lower of purchase price and valuation. Your Dutch or Belgian income is documented and assessed by the Spanish lender.
An honest limit: raising capital against a property outside Spain is something we can arrange in Germany only (§34i GewO). For a Dutch or Belgian property, your own bank at home does that part — and we finance the Spanish side on top. Every nationality can use this route; only the home leg changes hands.
Documents, income, and the traps specific to NL and BE
- Declared income only. Spanish banks work from tax returns. Income that is real but not on a Dutch or Belgian tax return does not exist for them.
- Existing mortgage debt at home counts. Your Dutch mortgage — even a low-rate, long-standing one — is charged against your debt-service ratio in Spain. This surprises Dutch buyers more than anything else: a comfortable position at home can look tight in Madrid.
- The valuation, not the price. A Spanish lender finances the lower of purchase price and tasación. On the Costa Blanca and the Costa del Sol, valuations regularly land below asking prices.
- Age and term. Most lenders require the loan to be repaid by around age 75. At 58, a 30-year term is no longer on the table — and the shorter term drives the instalment, not the rate.
Let us look at your case
A first conversation costs nothing, and our fee — 1 % of the loan actually arranged — is only ever due if the financing completes.