Hi from Newcastle upon Tyne

Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 1:21pm

38 replies2364 views12 members subscribed

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Aspen1992

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Good morning to all,

Hope everyone is safe and well and not going stir crazy with whats going on in the world at the moment....!!

We are Andrew & Eleanor from a mainly overcast and rainy North East England although very friendly place to live and always happy to help anyone :)

I own a chauffeur company in Newcastle and Eleanor has just retired from her job to work with me part time in the office looking after the accounts, presently we have no plans to move out permanently to Spain as I have another 5 years possibly to work before I will consider retirement.

We have been searching for 2 years for the right property and now we feel we have found it a lovely 2 bed apartment in Pau 8 Villamartin, we have always liked this area in general everything is close by and the Plaza is lovely with a wealth of pubs and restaurants and the coast is a 5 minute drive.

The only thing I am struggling with at the moment is which bank to open an account with, we will be non residents I am reading and hearing different things about each mainly to do with charges, I keep coming back to Sabadell as we will only have the utilities coming out the account we are paying cash for the apartment so everyone's advice would be welcome

Look forward to possibly meetings some of you and enjoying a few San Miguels in the sun.

Regards Andrew & Eleanor

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Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 1:34pm

Joan48

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Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 1:34pm

Hi there

We retired here in October last year. Also originally from UK many years ago as we have lived in South Africa for the last 40 years. Sabadell is also our bank which our attorney recommended. We have had great service from day 1 not only with banking but with Residencia etc. So yes I can highly recommend them.

Regards

Joan Laidler

Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 1:49pm

Aspen1992

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Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 1:49pm

Joan48 wrote on Sat May 16, 2020 1:34pm:
Hi there
We retired here in October last year. Also originally from UK many years ago as we have lived in South Africa for the last 40 years. Sabadell is also our bank which our attorney recommended. We have had great service from day 1 not only with banking but with Residencia etc. So yes I can highly re...

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...commend them.
Regards
Joan Laidler

Thanks Joan

With you being resident you won't be getting charged for the account I guess as non residents it looks like there is a 140 euro per year charge which is quite expensive to shuffle a couple of direct debits a month, I am looking into the starling euro account as this may work out cheaper overall.

The only problem being the agents are on about having a cheque at the notary to cover the balance rather than doing a transfer in case anything goes wrong.

Regards Andrew

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Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 1:53pm

mack

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Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 1:53pm

Hi I am the same as you holiday home to start with I've been with the bank around 2 years now no problem what so ever our lawyer set everything up even drove us there to set up accounts it can be a mind field and scary buying a house in spain if you have a good lawyer you will be fine anything you want to ask it's not a problem cheers mack

Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 2:12pm

Herefordjack

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Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 2:12pm

Aspen1992 wrote on Sat May 16, 2020 1:49pm:
Thanks Joan
With you being resident you won't be getting charged for the account I guess as non residents it looks like there is a 140 euro per year charge which is quite expensive to shuffle a couple of direct debits a month, I am looking into the starling euro account as this may work out cheaper overall....

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...
The only problem being the agents are on about having a cheque at the notary to cover the balance rather than doing a transfer in case anything goes wrong.
Regards Andrew

I think it's fairly normal here to do a house purchase with a banker's draft. That's what I had to do at the insistence of my lawyer. My bank Sabadell wanted a fee of 400€ for the draft (I'm not sure if that's proportional to the house price) but they offered to halve it if I took out their house insurance. That's what I did, but dropped them in the second year because Alfonso of Gran Alicant got me a better deal with Liberty.

Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 2:41pm

Aspen1992

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Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 2:41pm

Herefordjack wrote on Sat May 16, 2020 2:12pm:
I think it's fairly normal here to do a house purchase with a banker's draft. That's what I had to do at the insistence of my lawyer. My bank Sabadell wanted a fee of 400€ for the draft (I'm not sure if that's proportional to the house price) but they offered to halve it if I took out their hou...

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...se insurance. That's what I did, but dropped them in the second year because Alfonso of Gran Alicant got me a better deal with Liberty.

The agents are on about using Bankia they charge 450 euros for the bankers draft although that includes house insurance.

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Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 3:07pm

Gilli99

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Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 3:07pm

We don’t have a Spanish bank account as we have an Irish Euro account. However, we also have a Starling euro account and have made some payments for bills from this. This is free and very easy to use.

Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 3:31pm

Aspen1992

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Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 3:31pm

I am looking into the Starling account I think this may well be the way forward, initially I may open a Sabadell account for the bankers draft and house insurance then swap dd's over once all set up may be the easiest way

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Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 3:54pm

jimtaylor

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Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 3:54pm

It's perhaps a long shot, but if the people you are buying the property from are selling up to return to the UK, think about agreeing a sterling price and paying them with a British banker's draft. That's what we did.