- This topic has 14 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 18 years, 7 months ago by
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I have just opened a bank account in Spain. I was pleased that I did not have to fly to Spain to do it. (live in Manchester) Banco Pastor have a branch in London, they were very helpful, they sent all the forms to me and my husband to sign, we sent them back, they emailed info to bank in Spain, the account was set up the very next day. They have been very helpful.This morning they phoned to say cheque from developer had cleared and asked which accounts we wanted the money to be deposited (high interest please!) It was easy peasy. If you want to do same just look up the bank on website, or send me pm and I will send you the telephone number.
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Hi Anita,
I chose Bancor Pastor because my spanish lawyer Maria de Castro uses them for both business and personal use,when the cheque from the developer was written out to her, it was deposited in a safe until a week or so later when we had set up our account. I had to make a payment to Maria last week so I sent a letter instructing the bank to do this, it cost me 2 euros, nothing is it. I am sure thay have a bank in Murcia. the telephone number is 02072333043 ask for Maria or Cesar, they are very helpful (london office). I think it is 9 euros a year for a credit/debit card.
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Hi Anita,
We have just opened accounts with the Halifax in both Murcia (Mazarron) and the UK.
We did this because there are no charges for transferring funds between your own accounts in the two banks. I have also been told that their exchange rate is pretty competitive. But please check these details for yourself if you do consider it as I haven’t got around to reading the small print yet! I will be making a transfer later this week so if there are any unexpected charges I will post it on here.
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Thank you both Tilly and Cazybianchi for all the information you have given. It is such a difficult choice. I would imagine a Spanish Lawyer would use a pretty competitive Spanish/English bank account. Did you get a mortgage, Cazybianciy, thats such a hard name to remember 😆 If so who was recommended to you.
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Hi Anita,
No we have not got a mortgage with the spanish bank, we did not get that far, we were going ahead with an off plan, but after 20 months or so and over 70,000 euros in the developers bank and not a brick laid, it sort of set off some alrm bells ,so with the assistance of my lovely spanish lawyer (who is on the list on the forum) we met the developer and came away with a cheque. I needed to open an account quick so that the cheque could clear. We plan to move lok stock and barrel, so with the money from our slae of our home in the UK , we did not need to look at mortgages. Maybe we will in the future. The interest rate for a 6 month saving account with Banco pastor is 3.25%, which is less than what we get with alliance & leicester in the UK, I think it is 3.79% (oh they are part of Banco Pastor). The interest rate for lending is lower than in the UK, so I suppose it seems about right. Give them a call they are very helpful. You can make your mind up once you have spoken to them
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I am going to explain why my name is Cazybianchi, I have two daughters, one called Carina, one called bianca, y is and in spanish, Carina is nicknamed Caz at school much to my dislike, and when we like Bianca we call her Bianchi (we always like her, we love her), so Cazybianchi ! And Casa is house in Spanish, so we called our house the same, it is all a play on words. Someone refered to me the other day on the forum as crazybianchi, I felt like that when I was trying to sort the developer out.
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Hi Cazybianchi, How did Maria get you a cheque from the developer? 😯 Did you have a Bank Guarantee? Or was he just a nice, kind considerate person who realized he had no right to keep your hard earned money(or bank loan!) as he had failed to keep to his side of the contract by not building your property? What was the time scale?
Sorry so many questions!
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Claire,
It was possible to get the money back because the lawyer and I had some excellent points, from the lawyers point of view the contract written up had clauses in it that the consumer dept would not have been happy with.Yes we had a bank gaurantee, just recieved it a week before we went for the money back, however, it had no date on it. Which is against the law. I went to the appointment with her, I think he was surprised. I was dressed in a red business suit which anybody can borrow if they wish for a meeting with their developer.Red is an assertive colour,apparently. We put our case forward very calmly, he was genuinly upset that his company had let me and my husband down. I told him with the help of the lawyer how he should be treating us investors, he agreed…offered me a job!!! If you ewant something doing, meet them, look them in the eye..it is so easy for them to lead you a stray when you are speaking over the phone, they can tell you anything. Again, my lawyer knows her stuff, she was very calm and precise. use her she is listed on the forum.
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Hi Cazybianchi,
This “person to person”…face to face meeting, doesn’t always work! Your developer obviously had a conscience. Our developer does not!! Sofia and Charlie met the director of our company and the lawyer of the company on several occasions. They explained they had sold their house in order to live in Spain. The apartment was supposed to be finished by October 2005. They did not know there was no apartment until September 2005!!! No one had bothered to tell them! It was only when they came back from a 3 1/2 month extended holiday(due to the early sale of their house) and they phoned the developer to enquire about when they could choose the tiling etc that they were they told the grim truth! They could not/cannot buy anywhere else as the developer has so much of their money. They(developers) didn’t care a jot! 😈 😈 That is the type of company we are up against.
It is good to hear that there are some decent developers out there!! Well done to you and Maria!
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We got 1.42 exchange rate by sending sterling from our Halifax account in UK to Halifax account in Spain. I think we could have done much better (and Mark did).
It took over a week – we made the transfer on 27 April and it was credited to our account this afternoon, 5 May. No-one seemed sure where it went between times since it was all within the same bank, but they did say that being sent in sterling it could take [/u]two days to exchange because they had to wait for a rate from the Bank of Scotland (??)
So it might make sense for small transfers when it is more important to avoid transfer charges, but for big amounts when the exchange rate is more important I think we would look elsewhere.
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