Selling a property in Europe and the impact of GBPEUR rates (Tom Holian)

If you’re in the process of selling a house in France or Spain over the next few weeks you may find that things tend to shut down during the month of August.

This is typically when solicitors and Notaires tend to take their holiday and so if you’re in the middle of selling your property it may be prudent to find out when they take their time off.

In my experience which dates back to 2003 on a number of occasions property completions can be delayed for a couple of weeks, if not longer, and this can result in funds being delayed before reaching the client.

This adds a huge amount of uncertainty as to what may happen to GBPEUR exchange rates during this period and the obvious tool to combat this uncertainty is to look at buying a forward contract which allows you to fix an exchange rate for a future date for a small deposit.

Rather than running the gauntlet and having to wait until the actually get your funds this allows you to know exactly how much Sterling will come back to you once you’ve fixed your exchange rate in advance.

There is a lot of uncertainty in the currency markets at the moment owing to the Brexit negotiations and with Euro trading at its best level to buy Pounds since November 2016 it may be worth taking advantage of these current levels.

If you have a currency exchange to carry out in the coming days, weeks or months then you are more than welcome to speak with me directly as I will be more than happy to help you both with trying to time a transaction and getting you the top market rate when you do come to buy your currency.

A small improvement in a rate of exchange can make a huge difference so for the sake of taking two minutes to email me you may find you save yourself hundreds if not thousands of Pounds. You can email me (Tom Holian) on [email protected] and I will endeavour to get back to you as soon as I can.