Purchasing Holiday Home

IrishDON

Hi All,
We live in Northern Ireland and our purchasing a holiday house in South of Ireland and would appreciate some advise on the following:

We have monies in sterling that we need converted to euro's to buy the house, - is it best to just use the bank that the money is in? or better to shop around with other banks or post office? I'm not sure what costs we would incur for this conversion?

I read about restrictions to this conversion process due to money laundering antics of some people.

Any advise would be greatly appreciated.

thanks
D.

questionss

We live in eurozone and have converted euros to gbp using HiFX - much better rate & professional service. A uk colleague used it Gbp to euro and was also very happy. Friends have been similarly impressed with transferwise and I know of people that have used it both way.

PasturesNew

Just make sure you understand the protection level of who does the currency transfer. There was a firm that went down 3-4 years ago or so, fraud and all sorts. People lost life savings. They had some "stamp of authority", that wasn't the right one.

Some past threads, so you can see what happened and what to look for - further links in the first post here:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2763962

IrishDON

I've been on with a company called Capital Markets (affiliated with Ulster Bank) they offered a rate of 1.3380 based on today's market which is a lot more than what the ulster bank themselves are offering 1.3080..

I'm taking my time with this one as the last thing i need is to lose everything.

Cheers for the feedback folks - Its a murky world our there lol

knightstyle

As any money you give them to transfer isn't covered by UK banking legislation you could loose it if the company goes bust.
This is extremely unlikely but to reduce the risk send the money in several lots, not sending the next till the previous lot has arrived safely.
We have used Currenciesdirect many times to transfer money to and from France and have never had any problems.