Death By Documentation

Our wonderfully efficient mortgage broker was assembling our file for the single financial institution in the entire country currently willing to entertain non-French residents. This came with two distinct caveats. First, the file had to be flawless. Second, we had exactly one shot. If the bank said no, the dream died right there. No pressure.

Our broker assured us that, on paper, we fit the brief. However, French lending completely ignores the credit score models of the UK and US. Instead, they rely on a mountain of paper that tracks your existence from birth to your morning coffee budget, alongside a fiercely rigid debt-to-income ceiling. Our broker spent his days double-checking our double-checks.

Step one: open a French bank account. The strategy was to keep everything under one roof, so we filled out the online forms and braced ourselves. The bank requested a video call to vet us. We had a lovely chat with the advisor who would be ushering us through the gates of French finance. The meeting concluded, naturally, with a request for more documents. It turned out that sending everything to the mortgage department didn’t count; the banking department needed their own identical copies of our entire lives.

To even qualify for the mortgage, we had to pledge a minimum monthly deposit to the new current account. We also had to open a savings account and immediately park a small fortune in it—enough to cover over a year’s worth of mortgage and insurance payments.

After weeks of digital manual labor, we finally possessed the two bank accounts required to hit “submit” on the actual mortgage application. Ultimate victory? Not quite. The process had dragged on so long that several of our original documents had crossed the statutory three-month expiration date. They were now legally useless.

After a brief, silent scream, we gathered the fresh documents, updated the dossier, and finally sent it into the void. Then began the agonizing wait to see if the bank would grant us their blessing.

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