Selling my home bankers draft

Hi there. I live in the uk but have a property in Spain, I have agreed a sale price and have been told that the agreed price less 3% tax will be paid to me in the form of a bankers draft (from deutsch bank). My worry is that the bankers draft may be forged. Does the notary have a duty of care to ensure the validity if the draft? If not who's responsibility isn't and if mine what can I do as the deeds will be signed over at the notary meeting yet the draft may take at least 3 working days to clear.

What can you do if it turns out the draft is not valid?

To add to this the Spanish bank that I use (la caixa) want to charge 0.4% to deposit the draft and have said this is not negotiable as the rates are set by the central bank of Spain! Something's find hard to believe.

Thanks for any helps anyone can provide here. I have never sold a house in Spain before.

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 Its normal to get a bankers draft , you can always fax it to deutche bank for checking from the notarys office before you put pen to paper . sadly all spanish banks charge a silly commision but a bankers draft is cashable and has no clearance time .

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 The Notary's duty is to make sure the bank's draft is delivered by the purchaser or his representative to the seller or his representative because it will be stated in the Deed that the purchaser has paid the purchase price.  However, if the bank's draft is forged, it may fool the Notary into believing it is a valid one.

If it  turned out that the bank's draft is forged, you could then have the transfer of property invalidated so there is not much to be gained by buyer for forging the draft and I don't believe this happens but you seem to believe that this is definite possibility in your case. Perhaps you can agree with the buyer to visit the bank together to collect the draft which will still be in the buyer's possession until you then go to the Notary and the buyer signs the Deed.

It is not true that the bank commissions for depositing the draft are mandatory.  They are free to reduce them or waive them entirely and many banks do for their good customers.  My bank will waive them entirely if you fulfill as a customer certain conditions that they have in writing and are therefore applicable to any customer that fulfills them.  I know one of them is keeping a minmimum balance with them at all times.  I can't recall what this minimum amount is but it is not a very high one.  Something like 3000 euros or so and it does not need to be in a checking account, it could be in investment funds, their own shares and other investments.  I know for a fact that LaCaixa has something like this too so ask to speak to the manager or even go higher up if the manager does not want to negotiate a reduction or waiver.

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I sold my apartment just before xmas last year and

was given a bankers draft for part of the sale and I

asked and got the rest in cash.

for the bankers draft my bank charged a fee of 3 euros

 

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Regarding the bank charges, we got stung for 0.5%, which was over 500 euros, and had no idea the bank would do this - we managed to get about 100 euros of this back by threatening to go to our lawyer, but it was small consolation. I would definitely talk to the bank first and they won't agree, would look into opening another account just to receive the funds (your lawyer should be able to advise). To me it was legalised theft and they could only do it because they had my cash (briefly) in their hands, before repatriating the money. Had they asked if they could have 500 euros for putting money into the bank I would have obviously said no.

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I sold my villa a few weeks ago I put 130k euro into Lloyds/Halifax  3euro charge, watch out you your moving your money out, if you are sending it back to the uk , you will pay the bank again, some banks  are doing a deal with some uk money fx  companies and you will pay less this way in fees.

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Hi Elrondtom, all the banks seem to charge differently to deposit a draft.  I read the Moneycorp article/advert on this site and decided to go into our bank (Barclays in Murcia) to ask what the charge would be, just to confirm the Moneycorp statement.  Our friendly contact  looked very sheepish when he calculated the charge, they wanted 1% just to deposit the draft which is daylight robbery. He did say he would be able to negotiate a better deal at the time.

If and it's a big if, we manage to sell our property, we will definitely be using Moneycorp.  At least you know what you have to pay to deposit the draft and more importantly the actual exchange rate on the day of the transfer which will be better than most of the Spanish banks.

Good luck

Geoff

 

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