Buying Spanish property isn't overcomplicated but there are two things that will get difficult occasionally. For instance when you are purchasing a property you purchase it with clear title. What does that mean? Well, it suggests that the property has no liabilities on it when it is sold.

This of course means clearing the old mortgage. So that the process is like this. You make contact with the bank 2 weeks before the property purchase and you assert;

“We are signing for a property on such and such a date how much should be cancelled on that date?”

And this is essential because interest payments arecalculated on a daily basis. So the bank then gives you a certificate with the amount to cancel on the day and they also say who will be there to gather the check for the payment from the buyer.

Now let’s get into details. Citibank are positively useless in every respect. I had a prior rant about them on this blog in the summer. They actually spent a quarter of the year without granting a mortgage and giving any information as to why they didn't approve the mortgage and why they had taken so long. This is the same sale but the customers have actually got a finance from a different place. However what happened now is we have asked Citibank for the cancellation certificate and on the day of the signing the purchasers must pay a certain amount to cancel the current mortgage. Citibank have declined to give the certificate for the date of the signing. They'll give a certificate for the 5th of December but not the 14th of December.

Now apart from the plain fact this makes almost no sense whatsoever, why can they give a certificate from the 5th and not the 14th?It is actually illegal. They've got a legal responsibility to provide the information to the mortgage holder of how much is needed to cancel on any specific dates. As they have completely refused to provide this info they're acting in failure of the law. However how do we inform them about that?

All they have is a call centre and you cannot use Citibank in order to get info Citibank and Citifinancial are now two separate entities although the original mortgage was done in Citibank. Citifinancial have a call centre will you phone up and talk to a different person every time who doesn't know the situation from the prior person and isn't allowed to put any information through to the person who needs to sort it out.

Thus I'm nominating Citibank and Citifinancial as the 2 worst firms in Spain now before Telefonica/Movistar and ahead of Vodafone and you know what I think of Vodafone and numerous others.

Citibank, founded in 1812, used to be known as the City Bank of New York, which was later changed to the First National City Bank of New York. These days, Citibank is a very large, international bank. Citibank is part of the financial giants Citigroup, which is one of the biggest companies in the world. Citibank is better known as the consumer banking arm of this economic giant. Citibank was the largest bank in the United States in terms of holding in 2007. In 2009, they are still close to being the top bank in the United States.

Samuel Osgood originally founded the Bank and with connections from being the Postmaster General of the U.S. it grew quickly. A man named Moses Taylor took over the management and with his business sense and close connections to John Jacob Astor it became a finance center for Taylor’s business conglomerate. Then in 1863, while the Civil War raged, the bank joined the national banking system as National City Bank of NY, under Lincoln’s Treasury Secretary’s new plan to help finance the war.

In 1897, this bank was the first ever to establish a foreign department and a year prior to this it was also the first contributor to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Not only does this bank have these firsts to brag about, but it was also the first bank to open an overseas office. In 1914, a branch of National City was opened in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A few years later in the year 1919, this bank was also the first bank to have one billion dollars in assets, which at the time was very impressive. In 1921, Charles E. Mitchell was elected president of the company and was made chairman in 1929. During the time that Mitchell ran the company, the bank expanded rapidly.

It was not until the 1970s that Citibank took on the name that it still uses today. First National City Bank and the First National City Corporation were renamed Citibank and Citicorp. When this change happened, all the stockholders of the bank were then owners of the new corporation. In November of 2008, Citibank had to be refinanced by the United States government. There was an initial aid of twenty-five billion loaned to this them. There was another twenty-five billion invested in them subsequently. The Citigroup corporation now has about three hundred and six billion dollars in risky loans|lendings|assets|. As of now, Citibank is working on establishing itself once more in this economy.

The bank’s branches are concentrated in all the major cities in the United States as well as over 100 countries throughout the world. Citibank is now in a position to offer insurance, a full range of investment instruments and credit cards. With this strength and depth of experience, I wouldn’t be too quick to count them out.