Posted: Sat May 28, 2022 1:14pm
Hi Marci3,
If you transfer your funds from a bank with a UK IBAN (international bank account number), your Spanish bank will charge you for receiving them. I would recommend opening a Wise Euro and Sterling account:
www.wise.com
This allows you to pay your Sterling funds into Wise, which are then converted to Euros at one of the best rates you can get, and then transferred on to your Spanish bank. As Wise has a European IBAN (Belgian), your receiving bank in Spain should not charge you.
You'll need to check with La Caixa what they charge for a Banker's Draft. When we bought 6 years ago, Sabadell charged a flat fee of €100, but more recently the banks have changed their charging structure to a % of the purchase funds. I've seen reports of people being charged as much as €900, so definitely something to check in advance. You'll also need to order your Banker's Draft in advance and check how far in advance you can collect it, prior to completion at the Notary. We wanted to collect ours the day before completion, but our bank wouldn't let us have it until the morning of completion, so we had to delay the meeting at the notary, to give us time to get from our bank in Almoradí to the notary's office in Elche.
I assume you know that, typically, banking in Spain is not free and is especially expensive for non-resident holiday home owners? Have you checked what La Caixa charges? As Spanish residents, we pay €60 per year with Sabadell, whereas non-residents pay €160 per year for their accounts. If your property is going to be a holiday home, rather than permanent, having a Wise Euro account is a very useful way of ditching an expensive Spanish bank account, as you can set up direct debits for utilities, etc., which you cannot do from a UK bank. Once everything is set up and you've made your first payments via your Wise account, you can close your Caixa bank account.
Kind regards,
Kim