Smart Currency Exchange answers a common reader question, helping you to understand how they could save you money when you buy property abroad.

Article written by The Overseas Guides Company

“My wife and I have recently come into some inheritance, which we’re going to use to buy a second home in Spain. We’re going out to Valencia in Spain to look at properties at the end of September and it may be we find what we’re looking for during this trip. We want to use Smart Exchange Currency to make our currency transfers and make our £120,000 budget stretch as far as possible but we’re unsure when we’d need to open an account and what we’d need to do to purchase currency. Please advise.”

This is a common scenario. The first thing to say is that it’s never too early to open an account with Smart. Setting up an account normally takes just a couple of minutes over the phone for which there is no cost and no-obligation so you needn’t do anything else with it until you are ready to send money to Spain.

Before you look at Spanish property, it would be highly worthwhile talking to us about how exchange rates could affect your buying power, and ways we can minimise this exposure and help you calculate exactly how much a sensible budget is. Don’t forget, you’ll need to factor in buying costs, including taxes and fees, on top of the purchase price of your property, as well as a volatile currency market.

When it comes to ordering your euros from us, you could do this before your trip to Spain, perhaps through a forward contract, or once you need to pay a deposit on a property. Either way, to buy euros you would simply call your personal trader here, explaining how many euros you need to send to Spain. You would then agree upon an exchange rate and subsequently send the agreed amount of pounds to Smart’s segregated client account with details of the account in Spain you need the euros to be sent to. Once Smart has funds from you, we will transfer your euros for you, which typically arrive in the foreign account in just 48 hours.

For more information on how Smart Currency Exchange could save you money, download their free guide by clicking here or visit the Currency Zone.