Money · 2 July 2026 · 5 min read
Moving six figures to Spain without losing thousands on the exchange.
Here is the quiet cost in every overseas purchase: the transfer itself. It never appears on an invoice, nobody itemises it, and on a €350,000 move it can quietly cost more than your lawyer.
The good news for Irish buyers: you are moving euro to euro, so there is no exchange rate to lose on. A standard SEPA transfer from an Irish account to a Spanish one costs little or nothing. If that is you, your job is only to check your bank's daily transfer limits early, because moving €380,000 usually takes arrangement, not just a few taps in an app.
But plenty of buyers are not starting from euro. Savings in sterling from years working in the UK, a UK property sale funding the Spanish one, income or a pension paid in dollars. The moment a currency conversion enters the deal, the numbers get serious.
What the conversion actually costs
Banks price currency conversion with a margin built into the rate, commonly 2 to 4% on retail transfers. A specialist currency broker typically works closer to 0.5 to 1%. On £300,000, that difference is somewhere between €4,000 and €10,000. Same money, same day, different counter.
Nobody notices because there is no line item. The money arrives, the amount looks plausible, and the margin is invisible unless you compared the mid-market rate at the moment of transfer. So compare: get your bank's rate and a broker's rate on the same morning, for the actual amount. Ten minutes, real money.
Forward contracts, in one paragraph
A forward contract lets you lock today's exchange rate for a completion that happens in two or three months. You are not betting on the rate improving, you are removing the risk of it moving against you between the arras and the notary. If a 3% swing in the wrong direction would genuinely hurt your budget, locking the rate is the sensible, boring choice. Sensible and boring is our favourite category.
Timing and proof
Two practical points that catch people. First, completion funds must be in your Spanish account, cleared, before the notary appointment, and international transfers plus bank checks can take days. Move the money a week early, not the morning of. Second, Spanish banks apply anti-money-laundering checks to large incoming sums: they will want to see where the money came from. A sale contract, a savings history, a pension statement. Have the paper trail ready and it is routine. Scramble for it late and it is a delayed completion.