Repatriating money from the sale of their Florida home in February was easy for Gerry and Florence Allerston, thanks to the Sheffield couple employing the services of currency specialist Smart Currency Exchange.
Article written by The Overseas Guides Company
Back in 2005, the Allerstons had used Smart when they bought their condominium, on Florida’s east coast north of Miami, when they needed to transfer around $250,000 worth of Sterling to Florida.
“At the time of purchasing, we’d only ever used over-the-counter foreign exchange outlets, so I looked into using bank-to-bank specialist Smart,” said Gerry. “I compared the rates for buying dollars offered by my two banks and worked out we saved around £3,500 by using Smart.”
During their seven years of ownership in Florida, each year Gerry used Smart to transfer around £12,000 to the States to pay for expenses and running costs. “The property was a true second home to us,” comments Gerry. “As we were retired when we bought it, we were able to spend around 24 weeks a year there, in two stints. We used it as a base to travel around other parts of the States too. As you can imagine, we had a lot of friends there.”
The couple’s three-bedroom property was in a small town called Stuart. An 1,800-square-foot condo, its large veranda overlooked the St Lucie River and a beautiful wildlife reserve.
It was with a heavy heart that the couple sold the property, for personal reasons. However, they had one lucky twist. “While we sold it for around 28 per cent less in dollars than we paid for it,” said Gerry, “thanks to the exchange rate, we barely lost out when we repatriated the proceeds of the sale. That’s because when we bought seven years ago, we got around $1.98 to the pound, but last month we got around $1.51!”
Gerry added: “I couldn’t recommend Smart highly enough. We’ve been looked after by different people there over the years, but each time they’ve always done exactly as they said they would. Repatriating funds recently, our Smart trader David kept us informed throughout the transfer process, right up to the point the Sterling appeared in our UK bank account. We’ll definitely use Smart for any future foreign currency transfers.”
For more information on how Smart Currency Exchange could save you money when sending money between the UK and USA, or any other country, visit the Currency Zone or download their free report.
The views and comments herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Rightmove Overseas, Rightmove Group Ltd or Rightmove Plc