There’s a lot to consider when planning the purchase or sale of a property, particularly if you’re bringing funds into Australia or moving funds out.
Exchanging money with your local bank may seem the easiest option, but it’s not actually the most cost effective.
How do banks make exchanging currency more expensive?
Banks can apply a number of charges when managing international currency transfers, including imposing an outright fee, levying commission on the total sum, and (crucially) offering a very poor rate of exchange.
Bank charges can make exchanging funds as much as 5% more expensive than using a currency exchange specialist. To put this figure into perspective; if you were exchanging New Zealand Dollars to purchase a property in Australia worth $500,000 AUD, you could end up paying thousands more than you need to by using a bank.
What are the alternatives?
The Harcourts network have partnered with foreign exchange specialist Foremost Currency Group to provide a cost-saving alternative.
As Foremost Currency Group offer bank-beating exchange rates, their customers are able to reduce the overall cost of an international purchase or increase their budget. Additionally, every customer that registers with Foremost Currency Group will be assigned their own account manager to guide them through the process, step-by-step.
Having one point of contact to provide currency market updates, secure excellent exchange rates and manage the transfer can help take the stress out of buying internationally and let you get back to enjoying what should be an exciting step!
How to find out more
If you would like to find out more about Foremost Currency Group’s services and how they can help you make the most of your money, Joe Mayhew and James Baxter (Asia-Pacific currency experts) will be happy to answer your questions.
You can contact Joe or James at jam@fcgworld.co.uk and jsb@fcgworld.co.uk.
This blog post is brought to you by Harcourts business partner Foremost Currency Group.