Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

Can anyone offer any advice on the best ways to move a large sum of money, proceeds of a house sale, from a Spanish Bank account (in Euros) to a Sterling account in the UK and minimize or avoid the high Spanish bank transfer charges? Is it possible to negotiate these charges in advance or are they rigidly fixed?
My intention is to send the money to my UK Bank via a currency exchange company to get the better ex rate, Could I arrange this as a payment to the Currency company or is this still charged and considered the same as a transfer?
Anyone had experience of this when moving back to the UK?

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

This was discussed fairly recently so hopefully you will find this thread useful.

http://britishexpats.com/forum/spain...apital-888337/

Rosemary

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

Hi Rosemary,
the question is different, this post relates to the Bank charges just to make the transfer arrangements, the previous one was related to getting the best ex rate
thanks

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

Hi,
Go to moneysavingexpert.com to research your question. He has a few transfer company names on that site, which he states he does not get paid to recommend.
I use Transferwise.com for mine. Money usually in the count that date. Also you see what they charge.
It is not the charges you should worry about. It's the amount that hits your uk account that matters.
My bank Sabedell don't charge for online transfers below 50000€ to another Spanish bank account. You can also set up a transfer with your Spanish bank debit card (which should be free).

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

Also on these transfer sites you get the spot rate which changes various times an hour. You set up the trade and the site tells you exactly how much you get if your happy you agree the transfer and credit your account with that company with the money within a specified period. If you don't like the rate you simply don't push the confirm button, and it costs you nothing.
If you have 12 hours to credit the account with the amount you want to send, and the rate changes in your favour you simply cancel the transfer contract, and create another one for the better rate free of charge.

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

Hi Lic thanks for your reply.
However the currency exchange is not a problem as I use a good Currency Exchange company. The charges/fees I am referring to are the bank charges for just pressing the button to make the payment/transfer to the currency exchange company. I too am with Sabadell but the figure I am being quoted for a very large sum is 0.5% of the total amount, money for no effort just a finger on a button scandalous!

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

Hi,
Send it in amounts under 50,000€ and there should be no fee. I assume you have a sabadell key bank account. If you don't then switch to it and the transfers should be free.

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

So the issues is charges for making the transfer in euros from your bank account to the currency exchange company's (euro) account?

The problem may actually be with the currency transfer company. If their euro account is in another country, that may be the reason for the fee to do the transfer. Check with your bank and see if you get free transfers to other banks in Spain. If so, look for a currency exchange company that has an account in Spain. If I remember correctly, Currencies Direct has an account in Spain that you can transfer into.

Alternately, look for a currency transfer company that allows other methods of getting the euros to them. For example, TransferWise allows you to send money to them via Trustly, credit/debit card, SOFORT, and iDEAL. Some or all these may be no fee.

Good luck.
- Eric S.

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

Hi this was a couple of years ago but I was with Sabadell and had a 6 figure Euro sum to transfer and convert to Sterling.
We used Caxton as they had an agreement with Sabadell so we incurred a minimal charge sending the money to Caxton's Euro account. Another option we used was having the proceeds of our sale paid into the Caxton account by direct transfer from our purchaser thus avoiding any fees. The total was then held by Caxton and I spoke daily with my nominated dealer and sold € bought £ when I was ready.
I would suggest speaking to your FX trader and see if they have a similar arrangement.

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

Thats a very good idea,thanks I will investgate

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

I can confirm that we transferred money via Currencies direct.We opened a bank account at no cost with their nominated bank, paid the cheque in and currencies direct transferred it into my UK bank. No cost and easy peasy. Account with with Spanish bank was then closed.

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

I tried to get a Caxton account last year but was declined because I am not UK resident. Were you Spanish or Uk resident at the time?

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

Where you UK or Spanish resident at the time? I have found that trying to open a new UK Bank account seems impossible if you do not have a UK address which you can prove.

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

We did the same
We kept our bank account in UK when we moved to Spain, so no problem about trying to open one
I imagine the OP also has a bank account in the UK?

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

That's what the original posting said.

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

I had both UK and Spanish bank accounts. There must be a way of getting a UK account with no UK address, anyone?

Edited for clarity; I kept my UK residency, all associated UK financial accounts and UK address. I was fortunate to also own a Spanish property and have a Spanish bank account but was non-resident.

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

We opened two Lloyds Offshore accounts, Euros & Sterling.
My Spanish bank did not charge for bank transfer of € to Lloyds Offshore.
Great exchange rate and zero charges € to £ from Lloyds Offshore.
Lloyds Offshore did not charge to transfer £ to Lloyds UK current account.

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

Thanks for all your responses, very helpful.
I contacted Currencies Direct in Spain and they were very helpful.
They are prepared to send one of their representatives to meet me at the Notary Office then they escort me to a local Caixa Bank with my Bankers order from the buyer in my hand pay it into their client account which is secure and guaranteed. Then the money will sit in this account until I want to release it for conversion from Euros to GBP. NO FEES and a reasonable exrate. This way the money does not have to be transferred from my bank account saving me approx 2500Euros in Charges... Brilliant

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

Well done

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

Hello there, when I purchased a property in Spain, I used a foreign exchange service, the company were called First Rate FX, they were excellent! They didn't charge any fees like banks normally do and they made the whole process really smooth. Get in touch with them. Good luck!

Re: Sending proceeds of a house sale back to the UK?
 

My best friend sold recently and used Currencies Direct.He had house proceeds paid direct into their Caixa account and paid no fees but the FX rate he told me was the same as my u.k bank was paying.He would have been better off paying say .5% to Transferwise and getting interbank rate.