Selling house in France. Transfer of funds.

DrPips

Hi all,
My mum is about to complete of the sale of her house in France and the French solicitor is asking whether she wants the proceeeds transferring into her French or English bank account, and whether she wants the money paying in Euros or Sterling.  Is anybody able to give me some advice on this, or are their further questions to ask?

TIA,
Dom

user1977

I suppose the first question is, what is she intending to do with the money? If she wants to keep it in France then obviously there's no point paying to exchange it into Sterling.

sammyjammy

Without more info I would say have it paid in Euros to French bank, any currency conversion used by the solicitor is unlikely to be more favourable than that she can find herself.

DrPips

She won’t be keeping the money in France long term, just thinking about what is likely to be the best rate.  I would assume the rate from French bank to English bank would be better than French solicitor to English bank?

macman

Bank transfer rates are universally awful, whether European or UK. Put it into the French bank in Euros, which is presumably the currency she sold it in. Then use a reputable 3rd party transfer company.
If there are ongoing bills  or taxes to pay in Euros, leave sufficient funds to cover them in the French account. Then she'll presumably need to close that account if no longer resident in France or owning assets there.

sugarfree

I second that last piece of advice. I'm British but live in France.
Tell your Mum to get the notaire to transfer the funds to her French account. Then she should use something like Wise (formerlyTransferwise) to move the money to her UK account, as and when the exchange rate is in her favour.

Never use a French bank to exchange large sums of money. The fees (which may well be difficult to decipher) will be exorbitant. My bank - the Soc Gen - can't even tell me in advance how much I'll receive in sterling if I send a given amount of euros through them to my UK bank. Compare this with Wise, where you can see right from the outset exactly how much sterling you'll get for any given euro amount.

PRAISETHESUN

+1 for receiving the payment in EUR. If she decides she needs to convert some to GBP then I'd recommend using a specialist currency conversion service, such as those discussed here: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/foreign-currency-exchange/. I've used Wise in the past and would recommend them. You'll get ripped off by poor exchange rates and/or conversion fees if you let the banks do the conversion.

macman

Wise are reputable and efficient. I can't say that they are necessarily the cheapest at the level of one-off transaction we are talking about here, as I've never transferred more than about £500 at one time, but it'll be much less than the local bank.

Schwarzwald

100% receive funds in EUR, unless she sells to a British buyer who has the funds in GBP and she wants to have lots of GBP longterm and they can settle the sale in GBP rather than EUR.

banks will ripp you off on fx, Wise might be a wise idea, but potentially limited in how much you can exchange per wire.

it’s like using your GBP credit card while shopping in non-GBP-land, never accept automatic conversion by the retailer, always settle in local currency, otherwise you gonna get ripped off

macman

The current limit on Wise is 1.2m Euros for a sterling conversion.
If that's inadequate, do it in 2 hits.