Purchasing Terreno From Argentines Living In Spain

[syngirl]

BaExpatters please help me out as so far getting info has just resulted in arguments btwn my husband and myself...

Situation is the following:

We've found a terreno we like.

The (Argentine) people who own it live in Spain. (They have an apoderado here)

Most of our money is in Canada.

We haven't even made an offer yet. We are just trying to figure out how the hell this would go down. We assume that no right-minded local who lives abroad wants to receive the cash here, so if there's a way to pay them outside of the country we figure we can probably get the price down. However is this even possible? How do you do the escritura for a property that most/all of it was paid outside the country?

We would probably just pay the senha here, and then the rest outside if possible (since most of the money is outside of the country anyway). But now my husband is all like you can't do an escritura unless the money has been paid inside the country, and his brother in Spain was all like nooo if we wire it to Spain we would have to pay an escritura there and that would be toooo expensive etc (though I call bs -- I think that would be less than the money we'd end up paying to a cue a to bring it in to Argentina otherwise)

So how would we do this? Most of the money is in Canada. I can do wires from there to Spain but it can take up to a week for the money to show up. So how do you do the escritura and make sure you haven't sent your money off into the ether and end up without a boleto in hand?

Otherwise we would just have to bring the money in here I guess, which we could bring in 25k in cash and then I guess the rest would it be best to set up an acct in Uruguay to receive?

Any advice would be great since I'm sick of arguing theoreticals with my husband who still thinks carrying in bags o cash is safer than international money transfers...

 

[Tilda]

How is it different to pay in cash in USD here to an international transfer abroad? The actual money isn't inspected by the government in any case. The Escritura has a made up pesos amount on it in any case, agreed upon by both parties.?

I'm sorry. I'm not bringing any clarity to it at all but the issue intrigues me.

 

[nlaruccia]

I'm not sure how much you would need to transfer to an account in Uruguay but if it's more than $10,000 U.S. then red flags off in the Urguayan bank.

 

[syngirl]

How is it different to pay in cash in USD here to an international transfer abroad? The actual money isn't inspected by the government in any case. The Escritura has a made up pesos amount on it in any case, agreed upon by both parties.?

I'm sorry. I'm not bringing any clarity to it at all but the issue intrigues me.

Because the escribano`s stated role is to witness the turnover of money to the seller -- so my husband interprets that as meaning they need to witness the physical money being counted and handed over (especially since the only property purchases he has witnessed involved his parents and literal bags of cash being counted).

If we pay with a wire transfer abroad (which from Canada to Spain can take between 3-6 business days to show up) how can the escribano "witness" the process? With the time delay how do we ensure we get the property title and not just send the money off and never get anything here. I know it is very common to pay for properties to accounts abroad so hoping someone who has done it can guide me through the steps as to when do we do the escritura -- ie if on a Monday a.m. we send the money via int'l wire to Spain but it doesn't show up in their acct until Fri (or the following Mon) when do we do the escritura? We will have proof of the money leaving, but it does take time for the money to clear. We had thought to avoid the lag we could maybe send the money to my brother-in-law in Spain beforehand, then he would be able to do a realtime transfer and should he initiate the transfer either first thing in the morning or last thing the previous day, by end of day Spanish time the money should be credited into the seller's acct there. However my brother-in-law doesn't want to do this in case he gets flagged and taxed.

So then the BIL suggested getting an escribano in Spain -- which I don't see how this would be necessary since they have an apoderado here. But he thought -- send my husband to spain, set up an acct (impossible, since he's not a resident), send the money to that acct, then pay an escribano and do the escritura in Spain just so that my husband could shove a bag of money across the table Argentine-style. Sorry but that is a silly solution from the BIL, which is odd to me since he just bought a property there you'd think he'd have a better idea. That sounds ridiculous, the couple have an apoderado here, we can do the escritura here as far as I can see, we just need to ensure the receiving of funds abroad without any hang ups.

As to whether or not the sellers then get penalised in Spain when they receive, I don't really give a damn, that's their problem. I just want to make sure if we wire 50k usd abroad, it gets received and we get a property in return.

 

[syngirl]

I'm not sure how much you would need to transfer to an account in Uruguay but if it's more than $10,000 U.S. then red flags off in the Urguayan bank.

I'm not sure how much you would need to transfer to an account in Uruguay but if it's more than $10,000 U.S. then red flags off in the Urguayan bank.

When you say "get flagged" do you mean we will have to show source of funds -- because they are clean, so thats not a problem -- or do you mean we will have to pay taxes? If we send money to an acct of the seller in Uruguay is it a problem (vs wiring to an acct in our name). Frankly I don't care about any flags going up for the sellers when they receive, that's their problem. Our funds are legit, so that's also fine, I just don't want to get taxed, taxed, and taxed again. At a certain point when we are taking about 60k usd or so we're better off just flying back and forth to Canada. Our annoyance with that is that since this is a terreno we'd like to reserve the cash we bring in on the plane towards the actual build, and wire the money for the purchase of the terreno.

Someone else did the via the cueva version of sending the money -- can anyone explain this? We don't have a cueva that we have a long relationship with but I do have a friend who works at Banco Piano -- does banco piano give good rates on this anymore or are they just giving official rate?

 

[Tilda]

I sent you a PM but I'll post here as well so that your post stays in the recent list.

 

[nlaruccia]

When you say "get flagged" do you mean we will have to show source of funds -- because they are clean, so thats not a problem -- or do you mean we will have to pay taxes? If we send money to an acct of the seller in Uruguay is it a problem (vs wiring to an acct in our name). Frankly I don't care about any flags going up for the sellers when they receive, that's their problem. Our funds are legit, so that's also fine, I just don't want to get taxed, taxed, and taxed again. At a certain point when we are taking about 60k usd or so we're better off just flying back and forth to Canada. Our annoyance with that is that since this is a terreno we'd like to reserve the cash we bring in on the plane towards the actual build, and wire the money for the purchase of the terreno.

Someone else did the via the cueva version of sending the money -- can anyone explain this? We don't have a cueva that we have a long relationship with but I do have a friend who works at Banco Piano -- does banco piano give good rates on this anymore or are they just giving official rate?

If you send or deposit more than $10,000 US per month to your bank account in Uruguay then you have to prove the source of the funds. I don't know about other Uruguayan banks, but BROU requires that you go to the branch in Uruguay to complete any transaction. So every time you need to transfer money out of that account you have to take a buque to Uruguay.

 

[nkotb]

Hire a lawyer (or more). You have a lot of money at stake and this is complicated enough that you need professional advice rather than comments on an internet forum.

 

[jbeas176]

I'm no genius or escribano but this is what I saw. everyboy meets and the documents are signed. they witness you sending the wire. the documents stay with the escribano until the sellers account receives the money.