Opening a usa bank account.
 

Hi there I'm buying a condo in Florida, and need to open a $account. So that I can make payments and also receive payments form the property agent.
I'm living in the uk.
Anyone ave any advise or know where to go. Ideally I would like to manage the account online.
Any help appreciated.
Many thanks
Graham

Re: Opening a usa bank account.
 

Yeah, you go to a bank and ask them to open an account.

Presuming you don't have SSN, means you won't get an interest baring account but that won't make any difference.

Most/all have some kind of online facility, some will be free, others will charge.

You'll probably want to use a currency exchange service to transfer money for a better rate/cost, something like xe.com though there have been some other recent recommendations. You can find those searching the main US forum.

Re: Opening a usa bank account.
 

I would need to open the account now, but will not be travelling to the us until may.
I can open a us account with HSBC, but they want stupid money each month,

Re: Opening a usa bank account.
 

HSBC have a very small presence in the US and you either need a massive average balance or pay a fee.

Most banks will charge you a fee anyway, especially as you wouldn't have a work pay cheque coming in monthly.

If you search the forums, you'll find a couple of people who have managed to open an account while not being present, mostly old threads, think Chase might have done it, after a lot of hassle, if you see the office in London.

But without being here in person, you'll struggle as most don't have a UK operation and even those that do, they tend to be separate entities and the bank needs to verify you are the person the ID you use match up.

So really, that leaves you with a holiday earlier than planned, or have people use something like xoom.com to transfer you the money.

Re: Opening a usa bank account.
 

As an non resident, you should be able to open any type of account (interest bearing or non interest bearing). If it is an interest bearing account, then form 8-wben needs to be filed with the financial institution to not have US withholdings due to tax treaty between US and UK.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw8ben.pdf

I'd check if Capital One 360 (online banking) accepts international customers since it has no minimum deposit required, no fees, Debit/ATM card, free bill pay, free person to person transfers, free electronic checks (paper checks are issued to the recipient), and pays interest for their checking account.

https://home.capitalone360.com/onlin...nt?isBus=false

Many non residents also open US brokerage accounts.