Can foreign currency income carry a Spanish new-build mortgage?
For buyers with income outside the eurozone, a new-build sharpens everything: the lending limit, the equity requirement — and an exchange-rate exposure that runs for two to three years.
Author & regulatory separation. Content author: Siegfried Perini. Mortgage brokerage in Spain and Portugal is carried out under the §34i GewO licence held by Olga Nikushkina; in Portugal through a locally licensed intermediary. This information does not replace legal or tax advice.
In short
Am I bound to the developer's bank?
Earning in francs, pounds, dollars or dirhams means tighter Spanish lending limits — and on a new-build the currency risk runs for years.
Can I get a Spanish mortgage at all on foreign-currency income?
In many cases yes — but at a lower loan-to-value and therefore a higher equity requirement. The spread between institutions is considerable.
Is a foreign-currency loan an option?
Rarely sensible for private buyers and tightly regulated. We do not recommend it as a standard route.
Can I get a Spanish new-build mortgage if I am not paid in euros?
Yes, but the field of lenders is considerably narrower and the requirements are higher. Two effects compound. First, banks apply a haircut to non-euro income and set the lending limit below the 70 per cent of tasación customary for non-residents, so your equity requirement rises. Second, an off-plan purchase leaves two to three years between the private contract and drawdown, and the exchange rate moves across that period: your developer instalments fall due in euros, your income does not. Anyone funding those instalments from current non-euro earnings carries the currency risk during exactly the phase in which no bank is yet involved. What makes it plannable is euro capital in place before the first instalment, not a hoped-for rate on the payment date. The bank will ultimately assess your income in euros, not in your own currency.
What changes against the euro case
First, the lending. Spanish banks already assess non-residents cautiously. Where income arrives in another currency, the financeable share can fall further — the bank prices the currency risk into its assessment. The equity requirement rises accordingly.
Second, the construction phase. The instalments to the developer fall due in euro, spread across years. Anyone funding them from another currency carries the exchange-rate exposure on every single instalment. An adverse move makes the project more expensive without anything changing on site.
What can be structured
- Make the instalments plannable. The payment schedule is in the private contract — the amounts and approximate dates are known. That is the basis for planning the currency side rather than hoping.
- Euro security instead of foreign-currency income. Where a property exists in Germany, borrowing against it shifts the financing into the euro area — loan, security and developer instalments then sit in one currency.
- Choose the bank accordingly. Institutions assess foreign-currency income very differently. The gap between two banks can exceed anything negotiation with one will achieve.
We give no exchange-rate forecasts and recommend no FX products — that is outside our licence and would be unserious. What we do: build the financing so that it depends less on the currency.
Typical constellations
Cross-border commuters into Switzerland on a franc salary. Germans posted to Singapore, Dubai or London. Self-employed professionals invoicing largely in dollars. The same logic applies to all of them in Spain — and on a new-build the construction phase amplifies it.
This is core work in our practice: we broker across three platforms in Germany, Spain and Portugal, and we see the cases where the house bank declines because it does not recognise the pattern.
Frequently asked
Can I get a Spanish mortgage at all on foreign-currency income?
Is a foreign-currency loan an option?
What if the rate turns during construction?
Does borrowing against German property help here?
More on the construction phase
Aval bancario & seguro de caución
New-build in Spain — let us work through the construction phase together
I check which part of the price has to come from your own funds, what a German bank can raise against existing property, and what the Spanish bank takes on at completion — free of charge, no upfront cost.