As a child you may have mastered the Rubik’s Cube, in your time you might have managed to put an Ikea or MFI wardrobe together despite the missing bits and the dodgy instructions and you may even be getting the hang of Sudoku (who do you think you’re kidding!) and then you decided to buy an investment property overseas and things got really complicated.

Fearing the complexities of quirky local taxation and conveyancing regulations and a land registry that doesn’t have your piece of paradise on the records, you do the sensible thing and employ a specialist to manage each area of the purchase and to liaise between you and the seller, local authorities and lawyers. Suddenly, the whole thing becomes a lot less cryptic and the solutions to the hassles present themselves.

No one likes to spend a few percent of the value of their property on these issues but everyone understands the advantages that come with the assistance of experts in fields in which they themselves have limited knowledge or experience. In most things, having an expert on your side is a blessing and in overseas property investment the saved time, hassles, frown lines and legal repercussions are usually worth every penny.

One aspect of overseas property transactions is the exchange of your Sterling into the currency of your destination country and, oddly, when it comes to this process, the majority of people will ask their bank to exchange their funds; often with no guarantee on the exchange rate until their account is debited. Banks may well be experts at current accounts and Sterling payments and they are certainly expert on making money (when was the last time you saw a bank’s profits decline year on year?) but for the sort of transactions necessary in order to buy an overseas property, your local high street bank is highly unlikely to be able to deliver the sort of service you want, need or deserve and is unlikely to offer the sort of exchange rate that is available from a specialist currency dealer.

You need another expert in their field; a currency expert who will understand your circumstances, explain the various paths open to you and ensure you have the sort of information you need to get the best from the exchange rate. A specialist foreign exchange dealer will demystify the currency exchange part of your transaction and save you money by helping you to buy your currency at the right time. In currency market terms, ‘right time’ means ‘right exchange rate’ because exchange rates move every second of the day from Sunday evening (UK time) when the Far Eastern markets open, to Friday night (UK time) when New York closes.

Effective timing requires an in depth knowledge of the way that the market works and the factors driving the exchange rate at all times. Very often, the most unassuming news event by newspaper standards will be the major driving factor in exchange rates. It is perfectly understandable that the expectation of an interest rate rise in the UK will cause a flurry of Sterling buying as traders buy into the pound in order to access the UK bond market. However, when the rumour hit the market that the Chinese authorities were planning to revalue their currency, the Yuan, does that mean that you, as a private individual, should buy your currency there and then or wait or buy part of the total amount or wait before doing anything?

Frankly, without an insight into the mood of the market or an understanding of the repercussions in the US and European markets of such a move, or some previous knowledge of how heavily the market might be weighted one way or the other, it is hard to determine whether this is good or bad news for your transaction. You are probably not keen to spend hours absorbed in understanding the intricacies of the foreign exchange market and that is exactly why it is worth having access to a currency expert who can cut through all this research and answer the key question of ‘Should I buy my currency now and if not; when?’

Sophie Stride is an FX Consultant with Halo Financial Ltd, a specialist foreign exchange company providing expert currency exchange services to both companies and private individuals.  If you are at the start of buying an overseas property or in the process of buying currency to pay for a new home, it is never too soon or too late to save money on foreign exchange.  Halo Financial can be contacted on 0044(0)20 7350 5474 and their website can be viewed at www.thinkspain.com/halo-currency-exchange/