Finally, you will of course need to know how the whole process works, how you get from this point, to actually owning a property. There are slight variations depending on which country your chosen property is in, but generally the process will follow the guidelines below:

Once you have your reasons of why you would like to buy property abroad, and you have decided on when you want to buy, your selection may narrow yet again through what type of property you would like and where you would like it to be or you can contact us to do a search for you and offer a selection of properties of different types in a variety of countries which best suit your criteria.

When you have chosen your ideal property, the following will occur:

Reservation

You will need to pay a holding deposit(into our client account), and sign a reservation form. The amount of deposit will depend on the property you have chosen, but will generally be between £1000 and £4000.

The deposit will be transferred by Circle Earth to the developer of your chosen property. This deposit will be held by them, usually on a refundable basis until your reservation becomes definite.

Inspection

You may wish at this point to take a trip to see the property or site of your chosen property. These trips can be arranged by Circle Earth on your behalf, and will include a visit to the site or property and tour of the area, visits to a bank (to open an account), a solicitor (to go through contracts, power of attorney etc).

Legal Issues

If you decide not to visit the site, we will still put you in touch with an English speaking lawyer, local to your chosen property, who will be able to help you with your purchase.
We would always highly recommend the use of a solicitor, the checks that they perform on your property are invaluable and essential to safeguard your interests.

Your lawyer will be able to assist you with any legal requirements you need to complete to enable you to be able to buy the property. The simplest way for them to do this is when you provide them with Power of Attorney over your property purchase affairs. This is essential if you are not able to visit the area regularly. This enables them to act on your behalf with completing the legal requirements such as obtaining legal status in the country (a residency card or setting up a company)

The bank account which you either opened on your inspection visit, or which your lawyer opened on your behalf, will be the account which any utilities are paid from by DD, your mortgage (if you have one) will also be taken from this account, so it is important that once completion has taken place, funds are sent to the account to enable these payments to take place.

Contract and Payment

Following a viewing trip, should you choose to take one, and once you have singed a definite receipt, confirming that you wish to proceed with the purchase on a definite basis, your contract will be sent to your home address.

Within 30 days, you need to sign your contract and return it to us to forward to the developer.

At this time a deposit will need to be paid. This varies depending on the property you are buying, but will range from 5% to 40%, but usually being either 10% or 20% of the purchase price..

This will need to be paid in the currency local to your chosen property, we can help you with this and can offer excellent rates of exchange through our dealers.

Following the contract stage, depending on the length of time of your build there may be little to do until a couple of months before completion. Unless you have regular stage payments to make towards your property, in which case we will call you shortly before each one is due to arrange this. We will of course keep you regularly updated with any developments to your property, and we are here to assist you with any queries you may have.

For Completion

Just prior to completion, we will contact you to prepare for completion. We may be asking for the following:

  • Do you want a power of attorney (enables your lawyer to act on your behalf if you can’t visit the property to complete on it in person. Also enables them to be able to open a bank account for you, apply for a mortgage if it is required, connect utilities to your property etc etc and is highly recommended)
  • Information from you on whether you require a mortgage (this may mean we need copies of your financial statements i.e. P60, wage slips, bank statements etc which we will pass on to your lawyer).
  • Final payment of funds for completion, i.e. taxes, lawyers fees, property title fees, mortgage fees etc
  • If you want a furniture pack (if not already included) or other help in furnishing the property
  • If you would like to be put in touch with a rental agency to market your property to potential tenants
  • If you would like to resell your property to capitalise on the gain you have made in the equity.

General

At all stages throughout the process, the Circle Earth Team are here to help you with any queries you may have. No matter how trivial you may think they are, we have probably been asked before, and if we don’t have the answer to hand, we will certainly do our best to find out for you. We are here to help you through your purchase process and make it as stress free as possible.