Transferring funds back to the UK and using to purchase a house
 

Hello,

We have sold our house overseas and want to transfer the funds back to the UK using Wise (previously called Transferwise). My wife is currently in the sending country (Taiwan) for her summer holiday and I'm here in the UK. Does anyone know what hoops we need to jump through for:

1. receiving the money here in the UK and
2. using this money as a deposit to purchase a property with a mortgage here in the UK

The amount will be about £180,000.

Thanks :-)

Re: Transferring funds back to the UK and using to purchase a house
 

The UK bank will probably hold the money for 24/48 hrs to verify the funds, due to money laundering.

Re: Transferring funds back to the UK and using to purchase a house
 

Maybe talk to your UK bank and warn them that the money is coming?

Your wife is brave sending £180k in one go. I sent money from France via Wise to buy a house in the UK but I did it over several months, sending around £15k each time. I didn’t run into any problems at any stage.
No hoops whatsoever.

Re: Transferring funds back to the UK and using to purchase a house
 

I don't know anything about sending funds specifically from Taiwan to the UK, but I've done the same sort of thing from Australia.

From the Oz side, the FX company I use (OFX) asks what the funds will be used for (I put property purchase). My Oz bank didn't care what I was transferring the money to OFX for.

The funds land in my UK account within a couple of days, no questions asked from the bank.

When purchasing our property, our solicitor required proof of funds for the purchase (our bank statement sufficed). If you're paying with a cash deposit plus a mortgage, I'd imagine your mortgage provider will help with this process.

At completion of the purchase, when the bank sends the funds electronically to the seller's solicitor, I had to sign a declaration at the bank re the source of the funds. I put proceeds from sale of property in Australia. Dunno how on earth they can check that but there were no further questions!

Re: Transferring funds back to the UK and using to purchase a house
 

Great stuff! I hope that things go as smoothly for me!

Re: Transferring funds back to the UK and using to purchase a house
 

Why is he brave? There is no point sending several smaller amounts.

Re: Transferring funds back to the UK and using to purchase a house
 

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Doing it all in one would save on transfer fees as well.

Re: Transferring funds back to the UK and using to purchase a house
 

Just make sure it is sent to the correct account!!

Re: Transferring funds back to the UK and using to purchase a house
 

:goodpost: This definitely!

Talk to your bank and do your very best to make sure that they actually document what you're telling them in your (electronic) customer file as that much money hitting your account from the Far East is likely to ring alarm bells, and the biggest concern you should have is that the bank will not ask you anything about it after it arrives. So you need to preemptively tell your bank where the money is coming from (country), how you came by it (sale of home, sale of investments, etc/), and what you are going to do with it. Be prepared with as much documentation as you have available - ownership records, investment statements, etc.

So far as breaking the transfer into pieces, there may be some merit to that, however there is a possibility that that could further concern the receiving bank, not likely, but possible. So long as you don't break it into 5+ pieces you likely won't cause yourself a problem.

Re: Transferring funds back to the UK and using to purchase a house
 

Could you let us know how it goes?

I seem to remember the first couple of transfers I did with Wise, it took a few days for the money to hit my account (I sent it to Wise from my French bank account and they then sent it to my UK account).
After that the transfers got much faster.

No reason why your wife shouldn’t send the lot in one go. It would just make me personally a bit nervous.
I think Wise’s fees are mainly based on a percentage of the value of the transfer. The fixed fee element is very small. So it doesn’t make much difference whether you send them all at once or in several goes.

Anyway. Good luck!

Re: Transferring funds back to the UK and using to purchase a house
 

Wise's fees are here-just change the drop-down menu to the relevant country and enter your amount: https://wise.com/au/pricing/

Re: Transferring funds back to the UK and using to purchase a house
 

Am forgetting that perhaps your own bank charges you fees to transfer the money to Wise.
My French bank does it for free. And my UK bank charges nothing to receive it.