Buying Property in Mallorca?

Through an account in your own name, not ours.

Funds are held in client accounts with FCA-authorised institutions, and the payments themselves are arranged through FCA-authorised partners. The money leaves in your name and arrives in your name, and at no point does it sit in a Lucid account.

We coordinate directly with your lawyer, notary or agent so that payments are correctly referenced and land when they are supposed to.

Not to complete the purchase. We can send euros straight to your lawyer or notary, which saves you opening an account abroad and going through a second round of compliance checks just to buy.

A local account is often useful afterwards for the running costs of owning a property there, but that is a separate decision and one your lawyer is better placed to advise on than we are.

Same day, once your account is open and your paperwork is verified.

The trade and the payment happen together, so sterling converts to euros and the funds go out the same day, subject to the daily cut-off. A SEPA payment typically takes 24 to 48 hours instead.

What actually holds people up is almost never the payment itself. It is the account opening and the compliance checks at the start, and those take longer when paperwork arrives in pieces. If you know roughly when you are completing, start early.

It varies more than most buyers expect, and it depends on the property.

A deposit goes first to secure it. On a new build, stage payments follow at intervals the developer sets, and we manage those schedules regularly for buyers in Mallorca. On a resale there is usually just the balance at completion.

The question worth asking is not how many payments, it is when you want to fix the cost of them. You can convert the full amount in one go, or move it in tranches so you are not exposed to a single day’s rate.

Your property gets more expensive, or cheaper, and you have no control over which.

Mallorca purchases are priced in euros, so the sterling cost of the same property moves every day until you convert. On a large purchase that swing is not trivial.

You can take that uncertainty off the table with a forward contract, which holds today’s rate for a value date up to twelve months out. You put down a deposit and settle the balance when the money is needed. There is more on our forward contracts page.

When certainty is worth more to you than the chance of a better rate. That is the only test that matters, and it is a judgement about you rather than a rule about timeframes.

A short gap between exchange and completion rarely justifies one. The market can only move so far in a fortnight. A long gap often does, particularly on a new build where you have budgeted carefully.

One warning worth more than any of the above. Never book a forward contract until the purchase is genuinely certain. If the sale collapses the contract still stands and you still have to settle it. We would rather talk you out of booking too early than take the trade.

We make our money on the exchange rate, through a spread. There are no transfer fees and no other charges. The rate you are quoted is the rate you get, our margin sits inside it, and that is the whole cost.

Typically that works out at around a quarter to a third of what a bank charges on average.

The spread is only part of the picture though. There are apps that move money for very little and for everyday transfers they do a fine job. When the sums get bigger, what matters is having someone who picks up the phone, knows where you are in the process and can tell you what to do when a completion date moves.

Yes, and we would rather do that than work around them.

We deal with Spanish lawyers, notaries and agents regularly. In practice that means making sure payments carry the right references, land in the right account and arrive on the date everyone has agreed, so nobody is chasing a missing payment on completion day.

We do not advise on Spanish legal or tax matters. That is your lawyer’s job and they are the right person for it.

Yes, and it works exactly the same way in reverse.

We can collect the euros in Europe and repatriate the funds to your UK account, with the same checks and the same handling as a purchase.

Worth talking to us before you complete rather than after. There is a lot more we can do with the timing while the money is still in front of you.