If you've bought a holiday home in France...

[custardlover]

What do you wish you had known before doing so? DH and I have been thinking about doing this for years and are slowly inching ourselves closer to it. Currently weighing up the north (for easy driving at the weekend - we are in London) v further south for more reliable good weather but will need to fly more. But what else should we be thinking about?

Brexit?

We did it about 20 years ago in the north.

Pros, easy to get to at weekends, massive amount of land and lovely house by the coast. Really loved going and we made lots of use of it.

Cons, you do have to hire people to help with garden maintenance etc as otherwise you end up spending your time there doing jobs. The purchase duty is quite high. And you do have to have some language skills.

In the end we sold it about five years ago as the kids were bored of going there and we couldn't really justify the cost.

Enjoyed it at the time but much happier now going off on more warmer and varied destination holidays.

And yes, as PP mentioned, wouldn't be buying any property abroad at the moment due to Brexit and exchange rates.

Yep, we've been thinking Brexit for the past three years hence not doing anything! And highly unlikely that we'll do anything on a massive hurry but I don't want to wait 20 years before getting going - would like it while the children are still small so we can actually use it and enjoy it. DH speak fluent French so that should be a bonus! Thanks very much, great to hear practical experience stories.

Holiday homes almost never work out financially better than just renting something for your weekend and holidays.

Good if you are cash rich time poor and value being able to up and go with no planning/notice. But not something that usually works out as being good value.

That you will never be able to sell it.

Selling is a fucking nightmare!

@Fairenuff

I visit France regularly and have been going to French classes for years now and I know a lot of people who have second homes and several who were planning to go and live there.

Virtually all of them (90%) ended up selling, and the main reasons were:-

Double the property maintenance, everything you have to do at home, you have to do on holiday as well.

Don't have the chance to spend enough time there to make it worthwhile. The two couples who made it work best were retired and able to spend six months of the year there.

Personally I wouldn't be making a decision about such a big purchase until Brexit is sorted.

We spend all our holidays looking in estate agents windows, so I do understand the dream, but it's so easy to rent lovely places these days.

Oh yes, I'd forgot about the "selling is a nightmare"