«Not for sale to women who have had breast cancer“. The CNP Assurances group, a subsidiary of Banque Postale, created a false shocking ad to raise awareness of the difficulties encountered by women who have overcome breast cancer in purchasing real estate. An announcement broadcast throughout the month of October, on the occasion of Pink October, a month of mobilization around this disease. In 2023, in France, the number of new cases of breast cancer is estimated at 61,214, an increase of 0.3% per year since 2010, according to the Health Insurance website, Ameli.fr.
Buying real estate is often a journey strewn with pitfalls for these women affected by the disease. “The first problem is that this subject is taboo. As a broker, we need to know when women with breast cancer completed their chemotherapy, and whether they are in remission or not. They benefit from the right to be forgotten from 5 years of remission if they are not in relapse and the protocol is completed. Often, they do not tell us about their illness. There is a form of embarrassment in saying that they have been ill», explains Charlotte Jehenne, broker at Pretto.
A self-censorship
Former cancer patients were obliged to declare their illness in health questionnaires, even after their remission, for many years. This medical questionnaire has been removed for property loans of less than 200,000 euros per head and for which the end of loan repayment takes place before the borrower's 60th birthday. “Our job is to ensure that the insurance rate is lowered to below the 200,000 euros loan limit per person. Our brokers direct clients to banks and insurance companies where we know that health formalities are not intrusive», reassures Charlotte Jehenne.
Since 2006, former patients have also benefited from the right to be forgotten, after the end of a therapeutic protocol, in the absence of relapse. The period of this right to be forgotten was reduced from 10 to 5 years, within the framework of the Lemoine law, in 2022. The CNP group launched loan insurance last March without additional premiums or reductions in guarantees, and this , from the end of the therapeutic protocol and without waiting for the legal period of 5 years of the right to be forgotten. Despite the existence of the right to be forgotten, some people with breast cancer self-censor. “A woman I know does not dare to have her borrower insurance contract renegotiated. She ticks all the boxes and can benefit from the right to be forgotten but she does not dare, for fear that it will not go away even though she has been in remission for 7 years», underlines Charlotte Jehenne.
Property as security
Audrey was diagnosed in June 2021, shortly before the Lemoine law was passed. “We were renting at the time, which gave us some flexibility to change locations regularly. But when I was diagnosed, I realized how insecure this situation was for my family. If I had already purchased, the borrower's insurance would have covered the credit during my sick leave, there by being a tenant, I was exposing my husband and our child. If I don't get through this, my family will lose a partner, a mother and to this will be added a certain financial insecurity, that's what I told myself», confides Audrey. The Lemoine law was adopted in February 2022 and applied in June.
In June, Audrey, then aged 39, went to the banks, determined to buy and protect her family. “I didn’t look good when I went to see the bankers”she remembers. Audrey explained her situation transparently and indicated that she wanted to stay below the fateful threshold of 200,000 euros per person so as not to have to complete a health questionnaire. “The banks did not yet know how it was going to be applied, as it was the launch of the Lemoine law. They never made us a loan offer“, she laments.
Audrey wanted to take out borrower insurance at 40% for herself and 60% for her partner who earned a slightly lower salary than hers. The forty-year-old finally went through an online bank, which agreed to grant them a loan without asking any more questions, and without a health questionnaire to complete. About a month after the application of the Lemoine law, July 15, 2022. “I was afraid until the last moment of receiving a health questionnaire», recalls with amazement the employee in the pharmaceutical industry, cancer research and development.
«We were remained far from the 35% debt rate in order to be broad enough on our borrowing capacity. We chose a house in Île-de-France at a not exorbitant price to prevent the banks from digging into the file too much. Without this concern, we could have bought a newer, more expensive house, with less work to do ourselves», Regrets Audrey. Today, she is a homeowner and has been able to return to her full-time job.
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