Place to park money from house purchase pending new house

Pat38493

We will have a large sum of money £700K plus for about 2-3 months in between houses.

The money will initially be paid into a Lloyds bank savings account.

I am looking for a good place to park this money pending the purchase of the new house.

Is there a standard rule across banks for how much you can transfer in and out - I am looking at the top savings accounts on the MSE web site, but if I dig in to a few of them, youc an only withdraw a certain amount of money each day - sometimes as low as £20K.  

Therefore I need the money for the new house to be all in one place and somewhere where I can send it to the soliticor after a month or two.

I either need a good interest paying account where I can also instruct the bank to transfer large amounts to a solicitor, or I need an account where I can transfer the money back out to a current account without taking 30 days to transfer "small" amounts one by one.

Any ideas?  Normally I wouldn't bother with this but with these sums of money, it could earn more than £2K of interest per month.

Also - for the banks which have these £20K or £100K transfer rules, can you override this by calling them and instructing them to transfer the entire amount?

Mark_d

Personally I would put it all with NS&I.  You won't get a market leading rate of interest but all your money would be protected.

friolento

You can normally transfer between £10k and £200k per day with Faster Payments - check with your bank(s) or https://www.wearepay.uk/what-we-do/payment-systems/faster-payment-system/transaction-limits/

Most banks will also offer same day CHAPS transfers for larger sums, and most will charge around £20 for that service. Details about  CHAPS on the relevant bank's website.

eskbanker

Mark_d said:

Personally I would put it all with NS&I.  You won't get a market leading rate of interest but all your money would be protected.

The money should all be protected whoever it's with, although it would be important to ensure an adequate audit trail to demonstrate any movements between accounts:

https://www.fscs.org.uk/making-a-claim/claims-process/temporary-high-balances/

LeafGreen

Mark_d said:

Personally I would put it all with NS&I.  You won't get a market leading rate of interest but all your money would be protected.

there is temporary high balance protection, assuming eligible... 
https://www.fscs.org.uk/making-a-claim/claims-process/temporary-high-balances/

Oldhand_2

I was musing on this, being in a not too far away position.

I was considering putting the balance in say, the Coventry BS 4 access saver, at 4.5% variable. It could be split 50/50 across two accounts with my spouse (I don't know if you can have two shared accounts).

There is the problem of wihdrawing more than £50k per transaction (doesn't say per day, but I dare say they would sniff at multiple transactions). To withdraw a large amount you could, at the appropriate time, close the account(s) with the balance being paid into your current account, and then write the solicitor a cheque - cheques are unlimited.

Swipe

As safe as NS&I is for keeping your money secure, I wouldn't necessarily trust them with a large transfer as important as a house purchase. They are notoriously bad and slow at resolving any issues if something goes wrong.