Mortgage strategy & how Spain is the odd one in class

In the UK, mortgage strategy is normal. In Spain, it's a secret the bank is happy to keep.

80% of people in the UK take out a mortgage with an expert on their side of the table. In Italy it's about 40%, Germany roughly 60%. In Spain? Around 20%. The other 80% walk into the family bank, take what's offered, and call it trust.

We don't call that trust anywhere else in life. You wouldn't let the other side of a negotiation pick your number for you. But with the single biggest financial decision most people ever make, a 25 to 30 year commitment, that's exactly what most of us do.

And "trusting the bank" has a price. Run the numbers: on a €200,000 loan over 30 years, a gap of half a point to a full point in your rate is €20,000 to €40,000 in extra interest. That's not a typo. That's a car, or a deposit on a second home, handed over slowly enough that you never feel it leave.

Here's the harder question. The most important financial decision of your life, and how much do you actually know about how to optimise it?

Fixed, variable or mixed, and what each one really costs you across a full cycle. Which bundled insurance is genuinely required and which is just margin. What an early-repayment clause does to you. When a salary bump or a rise in your property's value makes it worth renegotiating. Almost nobody has a real answer, because nobody is paid to teach you. They're paid to sell you the product in front of them.

That's the gap we built Senso to close. One person used Senso as a sparring partner on exactly this, working through their options in plain numbers, and found a structure that saved them around €35,000 over the life of the loan.

Senso doesn't broker your mortgage, file anything, or tell you which one to sign. It lays out your full picture, including the costs you can't see, so you can walk into your bank or your adviser knowing what you're actually being charged, and decide for yourself.

Mortgage strategy shouldn't be a thing only the bank understands.