How to Get Your Money Out of Morocco After Selling a Property

Morocco's foreign exchange authority, the Office des Changes, operates what it calls a convertibility guarantee for foreign investment. Where an investment, including a property purchase, was financed in foreign currency brought into Morocco through the banking system, the investor keeps the right to transfer both the income it produces and the proceeds of its later sale back out of the country, as confirmed on the Office des Changes' own site. As of 2026, that guarantee is the entire legal basis for taking your money home after a sale.

This is the flip side of the funding rule that applies when you buy: we cover the same requirement from the buyer's side in an earlier piece, because it is really one rule seen at two different points in time. Wire the purchase money from your own foreign account into a Moroccan bank in your own name when you buy, keep the certificate the bank gives you, and the same certificate is what unlocks the transfer when you sell. There is no separate approval to apply for. The right already exists, provided you can document it.

It makes no difference whether you bought last year or fifteen years ago. Foreign buyers and MREs (Moroccans living abroad) sit under the same rule, and the certificate from a purchase made well before you ever thought about selling is exactly as valid today, as long as you kept it.

The Office des Changes is explicit that the transferable amount includes "les revenus, produits de cession ou de liquidation d'investissement étranger" (income, and the proceeds of the sale or liquidation of a foreign investment), as stated in its FAQ for foreign investors. In practice that means the whole sale price moves, not just the amount you originally brought in. If the property has gone up in value since you bought it, the gain travels with the rest of the proceeds, not just the original capital.

This applies whether you are a foreign national with no ties to Morocco or a Moroccan living abroad. The condition is the same for both: the money that bought the property has to be traceable back to a foreign-currency transfer into Morocco. Once that is documented, there is no separate application to lodge or waiting list to join; the transfer is a banking operation, not a request for permission.

Before any bank will process the transfer, Morocco's tax on real estate profit has to be declared and paid. Under Morocco's Code Général des Impôts, published by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the seller must file a declaration within 30 days of the sale (Article 83). The tax itself is 20% of the net gain, the difference between your sale price and your acquisition price, adjusted for allowable costs (Article 73-II-F-6°). Even if you make no profit at all, a minimum contribution of 3% of the sale price is still due (Article 144-II-1°).

There is one significant exemption. If the property was your main home and you had lived in it for at least five years at the date of sale, the gain itself is exempt from the tax under Article 63-II-B of the same code. That exemption is not unlimited, though: if the sale price is above 4,000,000 dirhams, a minimum tax of 3% still applies to the portion above that threshold (Article 144-II-2°).

The net gain is not simply today's sale price minus what you originally paid. Under the same code (Article 65), you can add a flat 15% of your acquisition price to cover buying costs, unless you can prove they were higher, and your original acquisition price is revalued using an annual coefficient tied to the national cost-of-living index, published by the tax administration itself. Both adjustments reduce the taxable gain, so it is worth having the notary or a Moroccan accountant run the calculation properly rather than taxing the raw price difference.

Keep the tax receipt. It is one of the two documents your bank will ask to see before it will send anything abroad.

For the transfer of the proceeds of a property sale, the Office des Changes requires "une copie de l'acte de vente accompagné des pièces justifiant le règlement des impôts et taxes dus au titre de la transaction en cause" (a copy of the sale deed together with proof that the taxes and duties due on the transaction have been paid), as set out on its page for transferring investment proceeds. Alongside that, hold on to the original transfer certificate your bank issued when you bought the property, since that is what proves the funds behind the sale were foreign in the first place. Without it, the deed and the tax receipt alone will not be enough. Gather all three well before you plan to travel or need the funds, since chasing a bank or a notary's archive for an old certificate is not something to leave until the week of the transfer.

The convertibility guarantee is tied specifically to money that entered Morocco through the banking system, in foreign currency, in your own name. If the original purchase does not fit that description, whether it was paid in cash, routed through a relative, or the bank certificate was never kept, you fall outside the guarantee, and the bank has no straightforward basis to send the proceeds abroad. The sale itself can still go ahead, and the money can sit in a Moroccan account, but moving it out becomes a conversation to have with a banker before you sign anything, not after.

If you are currently buying rather than selling, this is the moment to get it right: wire the money yourself, from an account in your own name, and file the bank certificate somewhere you will still be able to find it in ten years. It costs nothing extra to do it properly, and it is the only thing standing between you and a straightforward sale much later.

Get the order wrong, particularly the tax deadline, and you risk delays that have nothing to do with the exchange control rule itself.