Rick is a US citizen that had already decided to live in Spain, and he liked the Costa Blanca area, so the option of moving to Alicante was decided...
He and her wife were a little lost about the proceedings of buying a house in Spain. We started to work with them at the home searching process, and we were lucky to find his dream house on the first try. So we started with all the procedures required in our common way of working, open communication and full transparency. After negotiating the best deal for them, making the official reservation needed was thoroughly explained to him since it is a different process than the US or any other country. Here is called the ¨contrato de arras¨, it is a contract where both the seller and the buyer acquire the commitment to execute the transaction in an agreed deadline, it requires a down payment of 10% of the agreed purchase sum and it is protected by the civil law under some penalties in case one party withdraw of the agreement. We managed it properly, this is our bread and butter so the outcome was satisfactory for both the buyer and the seller. Before closing the deal at the notary, they needed to get the NIE card but their flight back was in a few days, it is an important document to have here, so we used our contacts to schedule the appointment in the police station in just a few days, through the official channels takes around 2 to 3 months to get the appointment, and we could get it on time to complete the purchase successfully afterwards.
How can I manage to open a bank account in Spain?
Hello Mike,
Theoretically, before you open a bank account in Spain you need to have the NIE number, which you might obtain quite easily in terms of paperwork, but quite tedious because getting the appointment might be very lenghty. Therefore, the obtention of the NIE affects directly to open the bank account and that could represent a problem when buying or leasing a property in Spain for expatriates, because both the seller or the landlord will require one.
Please contact us, because we can help you to open a bank account in Spain, we work with banks that allow our clients to open a bank account just with the passport number, temporarily until we obtain the NIE, where we can also help by speeding up the process to get the appointment. So the whole process will be easier and stress-free for you.
We hope this is helpful for you!
Best,
A New Life Team