Receiving funds from overseas while property purchase is in process

booksandbikes

Hello all - Our house is currently on the market, with hopefully an offer to be received in the next few weeks/months. Our ongoing purchase is going to be funded by the equity in our current house, plus a ported across mortgage and potentially another mortgage for a further £30k or so.

My mum (who lives overseas) is transferring money over to us periodically, to help us out. We may or may not use this money to help fund our next purchase. As her money is in shares, she is transferring money in tranches - maybe £1.5k every week or so. She's been doing this for the last month.

My questions are (in terms of solicitor or AML checks):

 - will it raise red flags that this money is essentially being drip-fed into my account instead of a lump sum

 - does it make any difference whether or not this money is used for our property purchase (ie. if not, then the solicitors will basically ignore it?)

Everything is above board....I'm just concerned how it may appear after reading a few things on here about solicitors being awkward re: overseas funds, and also the level of proof required, given that these shares are essentially built up and traded over the course of probably 20 odd years.

user1977

Open up a separate account and ask her to send it there instead? Will avoid any awkward questions if you end up not using it for the purchase price - will be easier if you reserve it for other expenses instead.

booksandbikes

user1977 said:

Open up a separate account and ask her to send it there instead? Will avoid any awkward questions if you end up not using it for the purchase price - will be easier if you reserve it for other expenses instead.

Do they not check every bank account of all those involved in the property purchase? It's been a while since I bought a house, but I assumed they did that as part of their checks.

user1977

booksandbikes said:

user1977 said:

Open up a separate account and ask her to send it there instead? Will avoid any awkward questions if you end up not using it for the purchase price - will be easier if you reserve it for other expenses instead.

Do they not check every bank account of all those involved in the property purchase? It's been a while since I bought a house, but I assumed they did that as part of their checks.

No. How would they know which bank accounts you had anyway? They check the source of the funds you're using for the purchase.

booksandbikes

Thanks - that makes sense. I don't know why I assumed they would check all our bank accounts, even if we weren't funding the purchase from savings. 🤦‍♀️

BarelySentientAI

booksandbikes said:

Thanks - that makes sense. I don't know why I assumed they would check all our bank accounts, even if we weren't funding the purchase from savings. 🤦‍♀️

Because people assume all sorts of things whilst in the midst of a life changing and stressful situation. 

You're not the first and you won't be the last.