For as long as your Guru has been here in South Florida, lending to foreign nationals has been non-existent. Back in the day, I had one brilliant mortgage broker, Kathleen, in Chicago, who was able to originate loans for Canadians. By the time the market crashed and we moved to Florida, lenders quit offering mortgages to foreign nationals.
What’s a foreign national, by the way? Someone who is a citizen of a different country, and without a U.S. Social Security number.
Florida’s number one source of foreign buyers is Canada, with a close second and third from South and Central America. Buyers from those countries needed cash, or a mortgage from their home country, to buy here.
My lenders are able to lend with 30% down on single family homes (and fee-simple town houses) and with 35% down on condominiums. Conditions do apply to the condos, however. These mortgages can be for a primary home, a part-time vacation home, or as a rental-investment. Full time rental or part time vacation rental.
Notwithstanding the popularity of Florida with the snowbird set on a budget, this program is for mortgages larger than $200,000. So many of the 55+ communities still won’t qualify as purchase prices are still under $100,000 in many. But for a single family home, or a beach-front condo in most of Broward or Miami-Dade Counties this should open up a significant population to the marketplace.