Financial
Banking
In order to facilitate the payment of household bills and other local expenditure, you will need to open a bank account in the country that you have chosen to purchase. It is often a shrewd move to do this before you embark on your inspection visit and where possible, we have included application forms to open a bank account within our Concise Guide to Purchasing Property abroad series.
Opening an account before you leave may sound premature but will incur little or no expense and will strengthen your purchasing position if someone else is interested in the property that you wish to purchase. In any case, you will be required to open a local bank account in order to facilitate payments to the developer and/or mortgage lender if applicable.
Currency Exchange
We regularly hear horror stories of purchasers exchanging tens of thousands of pounds into a foreign currency at their “friendly” high street bank at normal retail exchange rates. Whenever you exchange more than £1000 into a foreign currency you must obtain a wholesale exchange rate for the transaction.
We recommend the following panel of wholesale currency exchange companies.
You should register for currency exchange services as soon as you decide that you may wish to purchase abroad and prior to the inspection visit. Registration for the service is free of charge and will enable you to take advantage of attractive exchange rates as they may occur due to market fluctuations, prior to your visit.
Currency Converter (may take up to 5 seconds to load)
Mortgages
The developer or builder will sometimes offer a mortgage facility and there can be advantages with this type of arrangement, particularly since checks on an applicant’s status can be less stringent. However, you should also be wary of these schemes because banks offering this type of mortgage will realise that their mortgage should be slightly cheaper to arrange (from a legal aspect) than mortgages sourced independently. As a result, they will often impose unreasonable conditions such as compulsory insurance products and compulsory credit and debit cards for each applicant and any other expensive service they think they can get away with. Remember, you are not dealing with institutions or regulatory procedures that are in any way similar to those you will find in the UK.
