# Euros or ??????????



## travelling-man (Jun 17, 2011)

Can someone tell me if I'm likely to get a better deal on buying a property by offering payment in UKP, USD or Swiss Francs etc rather than Euros please?

I'm selling my place here in RSA and can obviously change my Rands into whatever I like and with the state of the ECB, I wonder if another currency might be of benefit to both buyer & seller........


----------



## robc (Jul 17, 2008)

travelling-man said:


> Can someone tell me if I'm likely to get a better deal on buying a property by offering payment in UKP, USD or Swiss Francs etc rather than Euros please?
> 
> I'm selling my place here in RSA and can obviously change my Rands into whatever I like and with the state of the ECB, I wonder if another currency might be of benefit to both buyer & seller........


Hi travelling

In my experience this will depend on the nationality of the Seller. any seller who resides within the EU I would guess, at the current time, want payment in Euros. Brits selling a 2nd home would I think consider £'s. When we recently purchased some land I offered payment in another currency of their choice which was declined.

There may also be some issues regarding registration and payment of Tax, I am sure someone more knowledgeable than me will be along with an answer to that soon.

HTH

Rob


----------



## canoeman (Mar 3, 2011)

Depends on seller, where your money is and whether it would cost you more converting from €, £'s etc into the currency they wanted. The problem with this sort of arrangement is co-ordinating with Escritura, and agreeing an exchange rate. It's easier, cheaper and better for you to instruct a good broker and pick the time or rate to transfer funds to Portugal e.g recently £'s gone from £1 = €1.10 to £1 = €1.15

It has no effect on sale as at the Escritura it is only confirmed that you have paid IMT & Stamp duty to Government and the seller confirms that he's been paid in full.

If the seller had a mortgage, loan then a Representative of lender would be there to accept their repayment (from you) in full and sign to that effect, unlike UK mortgages lender is a *part owner* of property.

The seller is responsible to Financas for any tax that he might owe from transaction.

Don't be tempted to do any under the counter payments a) because it's illegal b) more importantly it can cause serious problems for you if and when you sell.


----------



## mrforja (Apr 3, 2011)

Gold might go down well....


----------



## travelling-man (Jun 17, 2011)

I wondered about gold but it's pretty high now and I'm afraid it'll go the other way.

Helluva shame that classic car and motorcycle imports are as controlled as they are (here more than Europe) because they're worth 3-4 times more in Europe than they are in Africa!


----------



## canoeman (Mar 3, 2011)

There are no restrictions to personal imports, it's just if it's worth paying carriage and import duty if applicable.


----------



## travelling-man (Jun 17, 2011)

Sorry. I didn't make myself clear. Importing into Portugal doesn't seem a problem. However, exporting them from RSA is a damn nightmare to get the paperwork in order and they also limit people and companies as to how many they can export per 10 years.

I've no idea why it's complicated but it's typical of an African Govt. They always seem to take the attitude of why make something easy when you can make it difficult!


----------



## canoeman (Mar 3, 2011)

Welcome to Portugal


----------



## travelling-man (Jun 17, 2011)

I've heard Portugal can be difficult as far as bureaucracy is concerned but seriously doubt it can be as bad as RSA. 

Here, it doesn't matter what you try to do, if it involves govt or Cops etc, you can guarantee applications will be lost, licences etc will be wrong and delays can be counted in years...... often, many years. 

Last week, I went to the traffic dept and had to queue up to get an application form to apply to be given an application form to go somewhere else to get a vehicle inspection done. (Complicated huh?)

Waiting for the application form to get the application form and then waiting for the application form to be issued took me the best part of a day and the inspection itself took less than an hour! - I have no doubt I'll have to go back again because they'll have got something wrong though. 

We've had two occasions recently where people have been badly injured in car accidents and the ambulance crews have stood by and let them bleed (one died) claiming they couldn't do anything until the cops arrived and the cops said they didn't have any vehicles to come in! 

I don't care how bad Portugal is in this respect, I'll be very surprised if it's as useless as the lot here!


----------

