Almax International™ | Global Real Estate Partners

Whether you are shopping for real estate in the Hudson Valley or Sint Maarten, the best thing you can do is to get pre-approved with a bank or a mortgage broker. For the Caribbean real estate, we can recommend a few great local banks to help you. They will let you know what your price range will be which will make your time home hunting most efficient.

We have included a mortgage calculator on the right-hand side of this page to help you see if buying is possible.
Follow these simple rules to use this tool:

A. For Sint Maarten, use approximately 6% as the rough mortgage rate. That will give you a good guideline. Rates vary from the banks depending on which product you go with (open or closed, fixed or variable, etc…)

B. Use 25-year amortization. This is normal.

C. The range for cash you will require (downpayment) also can depend on your financial position, but a range from 20% of the purchase price to 30% is a good average. If you use 30% down, it would be a good number for this test purpose only. Here is an example:

Villa Price: $400,000.
Cash to mortgage required: $120,000
Closing fee required (this is on top of your downpayment): Budget 6.5% of the purchase price to be safe. However, it can be as low as 5%. In this example, it would be an additional $26,000. paid to the notary.

And a rough rule of thumb is most banks use is a 33% debt ratio. So add up all your loans (cars/credit cards) including this mortgage. Your total monthly payments should not be more than 33% of your gross income. You may consider adding co-signer for the mortgage, like your spouse, a family member, etc. The bank will combine all owners on title income and debt for this ratio.

If you have any questions, please reach out to Maxwell Alexander below. He will be happy to point you in the direction of a banking expert to assist you further.