Advice please

Posted: Fri Apr 7, 2017 12:56am

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Posts: 2

Joined: 7 Apr 2017

HELP!?! We are flying out in a couple of weeks to view properties with a view to purchasing one. So many questions though! Our plan is to buy a property to live in from Oct to March and return to our home in the UK April to September. This would mean leaving our UK property unoccupied for 6 months and our hoped for Fuert property unoccupied for 6 months although it's likely we, family and friends would use the Fuert propert during the summer months but not consistently. Wanting to be able to return when we want to the UK property and wanting family and friends to use the hoped for Fuer property during the summer, renting out either property is not practical. We plan to buy the Fuert property by cashing in pension lump sums/shares/savings as we are of retirement age. Is there anyone out there who's been in a similar situation and made the big move? It's the practicalities we are concerned about i.e do we draw cash using ATMs from our UK bank or should we open an account on Fuet? What are the Spanish/UK tax implications? Would we need to take our health insurance for the 6 months per year we were on Fuert? Any advice whatsoever would be very much appreciated

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Posted: Thu May 18, 2017 10:18am

raki

Posts: 1

1 helpful points

Location: Corralejo

Joined: 18 May 2017

Posted: Thu May 18, 2017 10:18am

Hi Libby

I have just seen this posting so I may be too late to help. We are currently buying a small apartment in Corralego, should complete June 12th.

We took pension money and Isa money to make the purchase.

We opened an account with Bank Sabadell, appointed a solicitor with Power of Attorney so that we did not have to make endless expensive trips to sign papers. We also appointed a cleaner /manager for the apartment as someone has to do the washing of sheets after you or you friends have left.

We used Transferwise on the internet to move our money from the uk to Fuerteventura. We agreed between us (wife and I0 that we wanted 1.18 Pound to Euro exchange rate. So I watched Sterling on the poundsterling live site and moved money when the rate was favourable.

Take the amount of sterling you are about to spend and calculate how many euros you get for 1.15 and 1.18 (frightening). Your transfer from your bank or an ATM would give you a very bad exchange rate. Sabadell gave me a MasterCard debit card so I can draw money over there in Euros as I have already transferred.

Hope this helps a little

Posted: Mon May 22, 2017 9:17pm

Libby

Original Poster

Posts: 2

Location: Caleta de Fuste

Joined: 7 Apr 2017

Posted: Mon May 22, 2017 9:17pm

Thank you very much for your helpful reply. Our situation has changed/moved on a bit in that we decided we weren't ready to spend half of each year away from our grandchildren who are still very young. We decided, for the next few years at least, that it was a holiday home we wanted,planning to fly out to, mainly in the winter, for 3 or 4 weeks at a time. We have just put down a reservation deposit on a one bedroom property in Costa de Antigua with completion scheduled for late July. We too opened a Spanish Bank account, appointed a lawyer and executed a power of attorney. We are using an FX company to transfer the money over to the Spanish bank account as and when we receive the proceeds of shares we are selling, bonds we are cashing in, etc. Very exciting but a little bit daunting too! I hope your completion goes without a hitch and would be interested to receive any post-completion tips. Thanks again. Libby