Transferring large amount of money from PI to US (sold house)

[Turbota 95]

I need your help here ...

 

My wife and I left the Philippines about 1 1/2 years ago and moved to the US. We are finally selling our house and lot in the Philippines for 11.75 million pesos.

 

Looking back, it was easy to have this house built as far as the money was concerned. I would just do a wire transfer from my bank in the US to my dollar account in my bank in the Philippines. Then, I would have the bank change the money from USD to Pesos. They would then make out a "manager's check" in Pesos for whatever amount I needed to give my contractor ... Cost of doing business was cheap ... $40 for the wire transfer and the Filipino bank would take 1/2 of 1 percent to accept the wire transfer.

 

Now, I need to go the opposite way ... I will obviously be paid in Pesos for the house we are selling. I need to exchange this for USD, and then have the Filipino bank wire the USD to my bank account in the US.

 

My question is ... Is this going to be as easy and cheap to do as when I sent money to the Philippines before?

 

I would think that I'm not the only foriegner that has sold a house in the Phils and needed to send that money back to there home country, but at this point in time, I am a little confused as to the best way to go about this (and the pitfalls envolved).

 

Any help from you good folks would be very much appreciated.

 

 

BTW ... The one thing good that I can see in all this is ... since the exchange rate is only about 41 Pesos to the US Dollar, is that I will get alot more Dollars now when exchanging the Pesos back to USD.

 

Thank's,

Ron

Edited October 27, 2012 by Turbota

[toshi 750]

i can transfer money trough my HSBC account from country to country, although i'm not doing this with the US, with europe is no problem.

 

when you have over 60.000 pounds in your account, you qualify for ''premier'' account holder and then the wiring of money from country to other country within HSBC is free.

 

11 mil. peso's wil be enough to qualify...

 

so u could open a hsbc account for the sole purpose of transferring the money, (don't tell them when u open the account, just say u sold a house and want a reliable bank..)

u need to open a peso and dollar account

then once the money is in the account, apply for premier membership

transfer the peso to the dollar account

then apply for a Hsbc account in the USA

transfer the money.

 

Once it's in the US, do with it as you please..

 

Once you have a HSBC account set up, then u can do everything online

 

im not sure what kind law is there regarding sending large amounts of money, but big corporations doing it 100.000 of times a day, and u money comes from a legal thing, so all should be fine..

Edited October 27, 2012 by toshi

[Jim in Cebu 114]

Turboda, Please post your experience with this when you have completed the transfer. This information may be helpful to a number of forum members. Thanks, Jim

[A_Simple_Man 6,797]

We are finally selling our house and lot in the Philippines for 11.75 million pesos.

 

Congrats on selling your house. From all reports on this forum that is not easily done in this country. May we ask if you sold it to a local, or a returning OFW, or an expat? I am curious where the market is for houses in that price range.

 

Best of luck getting the money back to the US. I am just thinking about the news story of the lady bringing cash back with her on the plane. The article said she could have done it if she had declared it but not sure what that entails. By not declaring it she got the works confiscated. (Article is on this forum somewhere)

[Turbota 95]

The family buying the house are both Filipinos.

 

 

 

Edited October 27, 2012 by Turbota

[ahoy53 268]

Not to shabby

[Captainmike 664]

i can transfer money trough my HSBC account from country to country, although i'm not doing this with the US, with europe is no problem.

 

when you have over 60.000 pounds in your account, you qualify for ''premier'' account holder and then the wiring of money from country to other country within HSBC is free.

 

11 mil. peso's wil be enough to qualify...

 

so u could open a hsbc account for the sole purpose of transferring the money, (don't tell them when u open the account, just say u sold a house and want a reliable bank..)

u need to open a peso and dollar account

then once the money is in the account, apply for premier membership

transfer the peso to the dollar account

then apply for a Hsbc account in the USA

transfer the money.

 

Once it's in the US, do with it as you please..

 

Once you have a HSBC account set up, then u can do everything online

 

im not sure what kind law is there regarding sending large amounts of money, but big corporations doing it 100.000 of times a day, and u money comes from a legal thing, so all should be fine..

 

If you try this let me know if it works. I'm HSBC Premier have accounts in the US and PI. I lived in Cebu 6 for 6 months last year, i'm bck in the states now. I cannot transfer funds from my PI accounts to my US accounts. I've tried and called a number of times but haven't found a way to do it.

[slim 22]

Hello Turborta, congrats on finally selling your very nice home...we sold ours, last april of this year and we did got a phillippines money for the amount. we then changed it to dollar money, from the money changer that we been used for over 3 years. reffered by our bank, BDO in cebu... NOTE: the bdo banks are only authorized to sell 30k dollar a month...inorder to transfer money from philippines dollar account to our usa checking account was not too bad, we just went to our bank holder and told the manager that we want to transfer dollar money to usa. she then filed up the application for us, you just need your passport or TIN# for your wife, some bank they will need the deed of sale so they well know where the money come from. charged any dollar amout was 40 dollars. and the next day the dollars was in our checking account .thanks ging

[Turbota 95]

NOTE: the bdo banks are only authorized to sell 30k dollar a month ...

 

Thank's a bunch for the info.

 

You see, that's where the big problem lies ... These banks can only change so many Pesos to Dollars for a given amount of time. If I could only change $30,000 per month, it would just take me too long to do this whole transaction since we are talking over 11 million Pesos.

 

There has got to be a better legal way to do this. I can't be the only one that's been in this situation before. Like someone else stated, companies are buying and selling all the time, and transferring moneys between various countried all the time too.

 

I am going to call my bank manager at RCBC bank in the Philippines and see what he thinks ...

 

Seems like in the Philippines, these banks will change as many Dollars to Pesos as you would ever want, but when it comes time to trade Pesos for Dollars ... everything gets in the way.

 

Hell of a way to run business in this day of Global Banking

___________________________

Edited October 27, 2012 by Turbota

[tim 6,080]

I guess this would not work for U due to the time frame.....

But could U not keep the PI Bank checking account open and just write a check (for max $ amount) on your PI account and deposit it in your USA bank each month ?

That might decrease your fee's for transfering $ ?

[Mr.T 202]

Very interesting. I'm thinking about doing the same with a car, when i sell it i'll need it to be back on my dollar account

[Paul 55,116]

Not to shabby

 

You should do a bit of a search on the forums and see where Ron posted photos of the progress during construction of the home. He did it right, for sure!

 

Ron, congrats on selling your home. I hope we meet up again one day.

[toshi 750]

for captain mike,

 

u have ''global view''? it links all your HSBC accounts togehter

 

http://www.expat.hsb...s_Find_out_more

 

 

You can currently link HSBC accounts held in the following countries to Global View:

 

*countries without Global Transfers service

 

Australia

Bahrain

Bermuda

Brazil

Brunei

Canada

Cayman Islands

China

Colombia *

Egypt

France

Greece

Hong Kong/Macau

India

Indonesia

Japan *

Jersey (HSBC Expat)

Jordan

Lebanon

Malaysia

Malta

Mexico

New Zealand

Oman

Pakistan

Paraguay

Philippines

Qatar

Singapore

South Korea *

Sri Lanka

Taiwan

UAE

UK

USA

Vietnam

Edited October 27, 2012 by toshi

[toshi 750]

some more info..

 

http://www.expat.hsbc.com/1/2/hsbc-expat/why-hsbc-expat/internet-banking/faqs#globalviewcountries

[Captainmike 664]

Yeah I have have but it won't let you transfer from your pI accounts to your USA account. I think there are a lot of restrictions now between the PI and USA. I ended up taking out cash the last time I was there and just carrying it back.