Wise fees on money for house purchase

You could use A Place in the Suns Currency, they give you a dedicated account manager that buys sells at the best time for you..

You can find it online or if you go to our website www.dreamhomeinthesun.es scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the link for A Place in the Sun Currency, and apply through there, I get a bit of commission.👍hope this helps.

Hi, unfortunately that wasn’t my question but I appreciate you taking time to reply. I am already registered with A Place In The Sun but once the conversion takes place the money will be in my Wise account which is when the monthly charges will occur. 

I would really suggest you do some  more research into Spanish banking.

Yes Spanish banks have fees, but there are numerous  different accounts in numerous banks.

Whilst the fees can be high for non residents, you are becoming a resident so you will have a different account and your bank charges can be as low as 25€ per annum.

We originally opened an account with Bankinter  and even as non resident our monthly /quarterly fees  were waived because the account was soon to have a large deposit in it for our house purchas. They even told us the limit we could deposit into the account so as not to incur fees.  Ie 1 deposit of 60k would have a fee, but 2 x 30k deposits on the same day have no fees. As residents we transferred to a residents account, changed because you need yearly statements for the tax man  and only pay for our debit cards 25€ each per year.

From other members comments on here I believe you can be charged a fee by Wise if you draw out over a certain amount of cash per month. Check your own charges on that, because cash is still very much the preferred currency over here. Workmen and even official bodies such as notaries, solicitors all want paying in cash. Bars still prefer cash- less bank charges that way.You obviously have no charges for withdrawing cash from your own bank and it’s affiliated ATM’s.

Yes still use a currency transfer company to transfer money. but as a resident in my opinion a Spanish bank account will be far easier to operate.

Lynn

Hi Kerry 

Wise started charging for funds over €3000 because the official euro interest rate is negative - meaning that Wise have to pay to hold that money. The interest rate  is highly likely to return to positive before long, so hopefully Wise will stop charging again.

Regarding Lynn's comment about cash being preferred - that's not my experience in bars/restaurants/shops etc - I can't think of anywhere that won't accept a card! Ok, workmen/officials may prefer cash, but they are not day to day costs.

Cheers 

Steve 

Yes, we normally spend (pre Brexit!) 5 months or so at a time in our motorhome in Spain and rarely ever use cash unless we stop at a little out of the way cafe on our bike rides. We find we can always pay by card which I prefer. I added €2000 to my Wise card today and got a notification immediately advising I was over the €3000 free limit and advised the cost is approximately 79 cents per €1000 over the limit. I don’t mind that but I need to open a bank account as soon as we move to spain to hold our house money as that will be a whole lot more than expensive having a big chunk in Wise. I hope they do drop the charges soon as I had planned on changing larger sums when the rate is better for our monthly outgoings rather than changing money monthly. 😎

No you didn’t misunderstand. We will be transferring about €300,000 which is why I contacted Wise to check the charges. I thought that would be the annual fee but the lady said it would be monthly!! As soon as our visas are granted (should hear this week 🤞🤞) and we arrive in Spain we will obviously need to open a Spanish bank account to avoid this 🤣

I have a plan sorted now as A Place In The Sun Currency have advised me they can hold my euros for up to 3 months after I do an exchange so that will save me a lot of charges and allow me time to get to Spain and open an account. We also opened another Wise account today in my husband’s name so that we can have €3000 each without charges 😆. Slowly getting all these little niggles sorted! 

Have you checked out the online Spanish account N26 ? 

Hi 

N26 is a German company. Do they offer a Spanish IBAN?

Cheers 

Steve