Securing an exchange rate for an overseas property purchase
Purchasing a home overseas is a dream for many British people, but there are many pitfalls that you have to avoid if you don’t want it to end up costing you a lot more than you thought. One of the main problems with overseas property purchases is the amount of time that they take to process. Even in nearby EU countries such as Spain, Italy, and France, it can take up to twenty weeks to process a property purchase. The main issue here is that currencies tend to fluctuate in value over time, and if, for example, the pound were to weaken against the Euro over this time period, you could be left with a significant shortfall. Let’s say that the property that you wish to purchase costs 100,000EUR. If the EUR/GBP exchange rate was at 1.2 when you agreed to the purchase, then you would expect to pay 83,333GBP for the home, so you would take out a mortgage for that amount. However, if the EUR/GBP rate were to fall to 1.1 over the period of the transaction, you would then have to pay 90,909GBP for the property – a staggering 7,000GBP more.
This, as you can imagine, makes budgeting for an overseas property purchase somewhat difficult. Thankfully, there are a few things that you can do to solve this problem. One is to make a spot transaction with a bank or a currency exchange specialist such as Currencies Direct, so that you can purchase the necessary amount of foreign money at the currency exchange rates that are currently being offered, and take delivery of it two days later. This means that you can guarantee that you will have enough money to pay for the property once the paperwork is out of the way. In order to do this, you have to open a bank account in a country that uses that currency, preferably the one that the property is in. While this is a bit more laborious than opening an account over here, the chances are that you will need to do this anyway if you are planning to stay there for extended periods.
If you don’t want to open a foreign bank account, then the alternative is to do a forward transaction, which is an agreement to buy the currency at a later date with an exchange rate that is fixed in advance. Usually, you will be charged a commission for this service, but it is well worth it in terms of the protection it gives you against currency fluctuations.
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