• When you agree to buy a property in Spain, you will know the price of the property in euros.
  The cost of the property depends upon the exchange rate that you are able to achieve to buy your euros.
  
  
• Therefore, you need to make sure that you are buying the euros at a competitive rate. As a general rule using a specialist currency broker, such as HIFX, will usually enable you to buy your euros at a better rate than your bank would offer you. This is very easy to check as you can easily compare prices or 'shop around'.

The payment procedure when buying a new-build property is structured so that you have several staged euro payments to make. Therefore the exchange rate available at the time of sending your deposit will almost certainly be different by the time you need to make your next staged payment, let alone the final payment upon completion.

How can you ensure that the cost of the property does not escalate if the exchange rates move against you?

• If you have all of the money: Buy all of the euros now and hold them in either your own euro account or in HIFX's client euro account. You can than make staged payments as requested by the developer.
  
  
• You don't yet have all of the money: Buy your deposit now and fix an exchange rate for all of the future payments.

This means that, in effect, you can buy all the Euros now but pay for them later (you will need to pay for only 10% of the reserved Euros straight away and the 90% balance each time you need to make a Euro transfer).

Does this 'currency risk' really make a difference?
A European property priced at 200,000 euros would have cost £127,388 in December 2002 but increased in cost to £137,931 by March 2003 (an extra £10,543 or 8% in just 3 months).

If you decide to buy euros each time a payment is due, then you might benefit if the Pound stays strong but you are taking a big risk. What price would you put on peace of mind?

To summarise the benefits of using a specialist such as HIFX:

• · Personal 'hand holding' service by patient currency consultants
  
  
• Excellent exchange rates
  
  
• · Rapid euro transfers to Spain with no UK transfer cost
  
  
• Guaranteed forward prices for up to 2 years ahead

You can register on-line at www.hifx.co.uk as well as gaining access to live currency prices.

HIFX Ltd, 59-60 Thames Street, Windsor, Berks SL4 1LD.
PHI clients please call: 01753 859159 info@hifx.co.uk