Advice buying abroad

Hi there,

Myself and my fiance are hoping to buy a home together. We reside in switzerland. Swiss law dictates that you have to have at least 20% deposit before you buy. My fiance has approximately 12% of the deposit. In an ideal world I would like to contribute the same amount. I dont have much savings though as Ive always put extra money against my irish mortgage.

As I see it Ive 3 choices:
1) I have my house now 6 years in ireland, would it be possible/advisable for me to extend my irish mortage to borrow for my swiss deposit?
2)I could sell the house in ireland, but I would like to come back someday and holding onto my house in Dublin would make that easier. Ruling out option 2.
3) save (like a mad thing), but that would take years - at least 7 when I go through my calculations and I would like to move on this sooner.

Has anyone been in a similiar situation? How feasible is option 1? I can make my repayments easily on my mortgage.

thanks
cas.

Point (1) mortgage lending criteria seems to be a moving goal posts, but last I looked (approx 2 yrs ago), banks were quite willing to let you remortgage up to 80% of the property value. If you have your irish property 6 yrs, it should have appreciated nicely, that combined with extra mortgage payments you've been making (?) should allow you to "release" a good chunk of equity.

Casiopea,
Assuming you have equity in your irish house, you can get an equity release. Depending on who your lender is, this can be quite straightforward