Question
I’m looking to here from anyone who has recently applied for a NLV. I would like an idea of the difference in price and the experience between a diy all the forms and paperwork yourself NLV or using a firm/ company to help with the process.
Answers
These are the answers of some Facebook group members:
“Having just gone through this personally I would say employ someone to help, it’s a very stressful time and anything to help relieve that stress is ok with me. Word of warning be patient, no direct contact is available with the consulate so you submit and wait. It costed me around 1k including translations for two people.”
“I did mine myself and including the medical and criminal report translations apostille of docs and price of visa mine came to approx 1k had to pay travel to appointments extra, you just need pointing in the right direction, I just went on the Manchester consulate website and emailed them with any queries”
“We got our visa in September, we did it ourselves. We found a notary in my local town in the uk, £50 a document, used translator (found online)£30 a document. Medical certificate £12. Bank statements don’t have to be translated. £550 visa fee per person. Used google translate to work out Spanish form. I got the Medical certificate online. That doesn’t need to be signed by a notary. The translator has to be a ‘sworn translator’ recognised by the Spanish embassy.
So total cost for two people about £1600. The visa fee was £550 for each person alone. We calculated £100 for each document if it needed to translated, notarised, apostilled and sent to the foreign office.”
“Did mine myself last year, patience is required but relatively straightforward process, lots of help on line from forums and people are super helpful on these sites.”
“We are in the process now.. collected all information uploaded onto a portal of the lawyer in Spain where they translate everything. Used GOV. UK apostle service they organise Embassy appointment and hopefully TIE appointment when arrive in Spain. Fee is £1600 for the 2 of us (that was just the lawyer fees which includes whatever needs translating.). Health insurance took a lot of time with some exclusion and expensive as we are in our 60’s.”
“Hi we done our own and it came back at about £3500 for two people. That’s including the yearly insurance for us both also.”
“Wow, sounds like everyone has had a streamline process. Yes I paid the acro, I needed that to make the consulate appointment. My medical certificate was difficult as my local gp would not see anyone for just “paperwork” because they were so short staffed. So I found a place in Harley street, yes, much more expensive but they specialised in medical certificates for visas so the wording was perfect. That was about 250£ plus travel. Medical insurance was around 1400£. (Get your Medical certificate from UK or Spanish Doctor fully online here)
Translate and apostille was another 120-150£.
And the fee at the consulate.
Unfortunately, we needed more paperwork, but only had 5 days to get it, the first week of December where Spain has 2 bank holidays. I had to go to a notary, get an affidavit, get it couriered to London for apostille and then translated. All in all cost about 700£, but I wouldn’t have been able to do that, without the company I employed to help with the visa process – So I guess, it’s worth using a company in case something crops up, they should have had lots of different experiences and can navigate through issues.”
“This article breaks down the costs of a NLV application in London: https://spainguru.es/2021/09/03/costs-nlv-application-london-consulate-non-lucrative-visa/“
“We have paid to have everything done for us, worth every penny, you just get emails asking for documentation, then email you your next step, all takes about 4/5 weeks then your ready for the consulate appointment. The cost was £3k (approx) all including health insurance, well worth every penny! ps; 2 of us age 66 and 59”
