Hi everyone, I was wondering if you have any hints and tips as I am about to buy my first property (primary residence) using my 2nd pillar and 3A. I don’t know if some of you have worked with a broker like Hypoplus, money bank,… and what is your experience with ? Is it worth working with them instead of visiting the different banks by yourself? thanks in advance for your help 
best regards from Geneva
My experience was that they were useless and I was better off going to get quotes myself. I suggest you go to your bank and a few providers like bvk.ch and see what they come up with. That way, they have a target to beat.
The best 3 offers they came up with had worse rates and worse conditions than taking the published rate on bvk.ch (who I went with in the end).
Beware that if you don’t take the best offer they have (if you don’t have one better) you’ll be forced to pay a penalty (around 3.5k IIRC) - it has been mentioned in another thread on this forum.
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I used Moneypark and they managed to get me a rate quite a lot better than a friend who asked around himself at the same time. The bank I ended up with was a mere also-run on rate comparison sites so I would not have even bothered to contact them. I understood they access an auction platform where providers compete with each other. Your mileage may vary of course.
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I have used Moneypark as well. I got a better rate than the banks which I contacted myself and I got it from Swisscanto which I would not even knew is giving mortgage. I guess if you know the cheapest option you would get the same offer than Moneypark but if you do not know these I thought that Moneypark was worth it for me (it was free thanks to a referral link for me).
Not sure how the offer is now, happy to share my referral link per DM
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Could you please send me your link?
I used valuu.ch 2 years ago. This platform was extremely useful. I discovered a lot of unknown providers and was totally free. I was able to play with mortage parameters and got offers instantly. Unfortunately, the plateform is now closed for private customer…
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I used moneypark.
I had a debt free real estate and I wanted to got the most money out of it, and they got 15% higher than me, and I spent hours in contact with 3 banks before that.
Totally worth the 1k I gave them. Would do it again.
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I’ve also had a positive experience with MoneyPark when renewing my mortgage back in 2019. I also got a proposal from SwissCanto and was able to save a reasonable % in comparison to the other offers I got before. For me it was well worth the 480 CHF I paid to MP.
Maybe you could get similar proposals while shopping yourself, but there is a certain number of hours to invest…
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I used Hypotheke.ch - very good experience.
- the business model and platform are very transparent, which I appreciated.
- no pushy sales agent, also very appreciated.
- the tool is great for simulating different scenarios and seeing what kind of offers different providers make.
Main downside would be (for some) what was a plus for me - there is no personal chat to learn more and get questions answered. You’re expected to do your own research and know the trade-offs of different options on your own.
Be aware: platform is also only in German
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thanks a lot for your feedback, I really appreciated, I m gonna try then money park and hypotheke.ch : )
Moneypark here too, the Advisor I started with quitted the company and the handover wasn’t made properly. Could had a better mortgage rate if she had been more proactive. Overall had a good experience. If someone is interested I can share the link and you will get a CHF 100 reduction on the advisory fee.
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Hello, Any recent experience with MoneyPark or other mortgage brokers?
Yes, I had a terrible experience with them 2-3 months ago.
I recently purchased an apartment. I had read positive reviews about their services on the internet, and given my work and family commitments, I thought their nearly 1k fee for mortgage hunting would be worth it. Since I live in Schaffhausen, I chose their Winterthur office and was assigned a representative. The first meeting, which was free, went great, as I expected since it’s part of their job to get you to sign the agreement. After that, we provided all the required documents and had another meeting where we were informed about the maximum purchase price we could afford.
Then we found an opportunity to buy an apartment. We also provided all the related documentation for the apartment. This is where their work really started, and the Money Park employee assigned to us was extremely slow. It took him three days to provide the finance confirmation for the sellers, indicating that we could afford it. Then, I had to push him to start getting the mortgage offers, and it took him more than a week only to ask me to go to SBB to get our passport and visa confirmed…
After another week of waiting and being pushed by the deadline to sign the contract, I started reaching out to different banks myself and got offers from UBS, Post Finance, ZKB, and SHKB. Took max 2 days to get the offers from them.
Almost 4 weeks after we started the process we received the offers from Money Park, where I only got two offers: Swiss Life and Graubündner Kantonalbank. I was looking for a fixed term so Swiss Life was around 2.3%!!! for 10 years, Graubündner Kantonalbank was around 2.1% for 10 years. It was very disappointing to only get 2 offers and really bad offers. Well, they also informed me that Helvetia didn’t want to make any offer…
In the end, I chose SHKB and didn’t have to pay the penalty to Money Park (2.5K CHF) for choosing a provider not offered by them since I got a better offer elsewhere.
I think it depends on the Money Park employee assigned to you, so good luck!
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Similar experience. I think MP might be useful only if the alternative is your bank is UBS and you just go and take whatever offer they give you.
Otherwise, if you apply to a few places yourself and get some offers, you’ll probably do fine.
Check BVK.CH, your local cantonal bank as minimal starting points.
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I totally agree that it depends on the advisor.
You may also want to check:
Any experience with those companies for construction loans?
I think for construction loans the options are fairly limited, I had one call with one of the brokers (the one advertised by comparis) two years ago and they were not very active/interested (my guess is because it is construction but maybe there were other factors based on my case), I think for construction insurances are not providing the loans and that is what they are mainly trying to sell. In the end I had to go with UBS for construction loan.
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I would not go with Money park, they are useless, I lost a transaction because of them, not serious at all and they were not able to give me the requested certificate in due time. Then the property was sold to another client…
I 100% recommend resolve as mentioned above.
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I would recommend to go and visit (personally) 2-3 banks. I made the experience that with banks I did not meet in person, the offers were very bad.
Once you got your offers, you can still call Moneypark and ask them if they can get you a better offer.
I am curious to ask what is the purpose of mortgage advisor?
The banks don’t want to deal with prospective mortgage applicants directly? I always thought you ask 4-5 banks to make an offer and then decide what’s the best.
Is mortgage advisory more about suggestions on what type of mortgage to go for depending on individual situation OR it’s about getting best offers from banks who might not give best offers to you directly?
In my case it was mainly to avoid the hassle of contacting and providing the same information to different banks… which at the end I had to do. I hoped they would get best offers from banks (this is what they advertises) which now I seriously doubt. They were unproffesional and not able to meet the deadlines
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