Foreign property mortgages from OCBC or other Singapore bank (USA property specifically)

[American]

Hi all

I am a USA citizen and Singapore PR. I am looking to purchase an investment property in the USA and would like to finance this with a Singapore based mortgage.

I came across OCBC bank providing foreign property mortgage for New York.

Has anyone used OCBC for this purpose? Any thoughts or experiences?

Anyone know of other mortgage options to purchase USA Property?

Biggest benefits I can see are lower interest rates in Singapore and ease of servicing as I am paid here in SGD

[PNGMK]

1. I've found that foreign banks will be better at this.
2. Remember the FOREX risk if you borrow in SGD.

[Strong Eagle]

The biggest risk you face is exchange risk. A friend of mine had to put up $250K in cash when the Australian dollar tanked against the SGD... you have to maintain your typical 80/20 loan ratio.

[PNGMK]

I used to do this but once my local property was 50% paid off I used a equity loan to pay off the foreign collateral loans completely. Now I don't really care what the exchange rate is doing as my foreign properties are "paid off" (in the sense they don't have a mortgage against them).

[American]

I used to do this but once my local property was 50% paid off I used a equity loan to pay off the foreign collateral loans completely. Now I don't really care what the exchange rate is doing as my foreign properties are "paid off" (in the sense they don't have a mortgage against them).

Thanks PNGMK. May I ask where your property was? OCBC is the only bank advertising loans for the US market and only focus on New York. I can’t seem to find any banks online that advertise for California where I want to buy.

Also what bank did you go with? standard chartered?

[PNGMK]

ANZ/Australia. For USA you'd need to look at Citi / HSBC / BOA and other banks with retail presence in the USA. The given reason being that if they need to hold your title as collateral they need to do it in the USA via a registered bank in USA as the mortgagor and they need to do valuations (and not just desk valuations but actual walk throughs). I assume OCBC have an office or partner bank in only NYC doing that for them.

[American]

ANZ/Australia. For USA you'd need to look at Citi / HSBC / BOA and other banks with retail presence in the USA. The given reason being that if they need to hold your title as collateral they need to do it in the USA via a registered bank in USA as the mortgagor and they need to do valuations (and not just desk valuations but actual walk throughs). I assume OCBC have an office or partner bank in only NYC doing that for them.

Good tip on the local branch presence in USA. I see that citi sg doesn’t offer any foreign property loans. Need to check HSBC. BOA - not sure they have a presence in SG so need to check. Thanks!

[PNGMK]

The other trick is to buy in Singapore and pay down equity ASAP and use a term loan in SGD to pay off or paydown your forex mortgages. Term loans against property run about the same interest as mortgages.