If you can buy your Spanish holiday home outright, do it. That way you will own the apartment completely without being in debt. If you don’t have the cash, there are two ways to pay for your foreign home. You can extend your main mortgage, a cheap way of borrowing the extra cash you need or you can get a new mortgage for the property. The other option is to take out a second mortgage on your apartment.

Many banks offer buyers the opportunity to deal in euros or sterling hence you don’t have to even deal in a foreign currency. But if you let out the apartment, the rent will be paid in euros and it is advisable to take the mortgage too in euros. If you are not letting the house, but your main income is in euros, again it makes sense to take out a euro mortgage. The mortgage will be run in whatever currency you opt for.

Before taking a mortgage on your apartment you need to open an account in a bank which has an online remote banking facility like net-banking and phone-banking as you will need to monitor your mortgage payments and can do this from home, without the hassle of travelling to the country every time you make a payment. Banks sanction loans up to a maximum of 75% of the total value. This means that you need only pay 25% of the total amount to the seller. Before sanctioning a loan, the bank will need to verify that you can make the monthly payments. For this you will need to submit copies of all your financial documents including any outstanding debts, this includes your last three pay slips and your S60 documents. To assess the value of your property, the bank will send its own assessment agent who will charge a fee to be paid before the due date of assessment. The entire process of obtaining the loan takes about 5 to 7 weeks.