I am told that in order to sign a lease for a rental property in Madrid that I will have to come up with 1 months rent, 1 or 2 months deposit and 1 months rent for the real estate agent (which is all fine and expected) and, this is the kicker, a bank guarantee for 6 months of rent.

According to the bank, being that I don't own any spanish assets nor have any credit history in Spain that we will have to deposit 110% of the value of the guarantee and pay 0.5% set-up fee and a fee of 1% each quarter (so I am paying them to guarantee a contract with my own money?). So roughly this comes out to about 20K USD (using an optimistic exchange rate of 1.50)that we have to come up with just to move into an apartment in Spain.

Does this sound right to anyone? Surely there is another way to secure this guarantee...Understanding that I have excellent credit in the US but no collateral to speak of...I do have a car but technically the bank still owns that asset. One agent mentioned an insurance specifically for this but most of the "landlords" of the properties I have seen are unwilling to go this route.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience.