If you had 100k inheritance, that you wanted to invest in a holiday home abroad, at least two bedrooms

[TheGingerCatsWhiskas]

Where would you look ? Ideally two bedroom, a balcony or sit our space and a sandy beach

I’ve long held a fantasy of doing up an old wreck in Kefalonia!

Invested where?

I would choose Greece as there are some really lovely areas. However if you want a shorter flight so you can go for weekend purposes maybe somewhere nearer like Menorca. I would also consider the weather and how warm it is all year round.

I wouldn’t. I have had a holiday home previously and sold it once we had children. To make the most out of it you need to use it really frequently and for me still be able to afford holidays to other places. You will still need to pay equivalent of council tax, service charges and your bills, so you need to use it a lot to make it worthwhile. Or you have to rent it out when you are not using it, we tried this and it did not go well. Every time we went back stuff was damaged or broken and it didn’t feel like ours anymore.

We were seriously considering it a few years ago, Lanzarote is my happy place and I would have loved to have a base there. However I did a lot of research about holiday lets (we would have wanted to let it out to raise income) and the local tax situation seemed quite intense, especially if it wasn’t fully booked out. We decided it was too much money to spend in the end and we bought a camper van instead, we’re currently on a tour of France

I'd use it to upgrade my own home. For 100k you could get a conservatory extension or a loft conversion or something and that'd make you happier and more comfortable everyday rather than just a few weeks a year. You'd add value for when you come to sell it.

How old are you?

If you want to buy it to leave as an inheritance for someone I'd recommend checking out the inheritance rules, legalities and any inheritance tax thst may arise for which ever country you're considering because it could make it quite complicated.

Lots of areas of Spain fall into that price, just look at Place in the Sun!

Any number of places

S&P 500 over the last 20 years has achieved 10% on average.

My conservative investment portfolio did 14% after fees last year ignoring the tax breaks it provided.

I usually quite like an AirBnB and I reckon outside the school summer holidays you can usually get a 2 bed for somewhere between £1-£1.5k for a week. That's the only money you're saving (because you have to pay for flights etc). We've had more than one AirBnB where we know the owner enough that we now do the whole thing offline.

I really think I would chuck it in the stock market, you could draw down 4% per year every year or if you sucked up the odd year where you didn't draw down if the market was bad you could draw down more in the other years. That would cover 4ish weeks of holidays which would probably do me, I think?

(Especially as there's none of their equivalent of council tax, electric, water, internet etc etc to pay.)

Please don’t come to Spain. £100k may not seem like much to you, but it’s all some of us will ever be able to afford in our hometowns or local areas where we live.

Thankfully not my case, but minimum wage in Spain is £15k a year, compare that to £25k in the UK.

Median wage is £25k compared to your almost £40k.

We have been priced out for years now by “not rich” landlords from abroad who are raising prices for everyone in the coastal areas. Don’t buy a house so that you can visit a few weeks every year. It’s a dream for many of us to own property one day, and it’s not like we aren’t working hard for it - but the price keeps climbing unless we move out and away from our families and friends, to areas tourists aren’t interested in.

Definitely don't buy somewhere with a pool. They take a lot of time and money and if you're not there a lot, you'll take several days each holiday getting the pool good enough to use...

We have holiday property bond instead. It isn’t right for everyone, but it works for us.
We have £40k in there.
https://www.hpb.co.uk/

I wouldn't count on "passing it down". I had friends where the grandparents owned a villa at Lagio Maggiore. They paid for the maintenance, carer etc and all the family used it.

It was then handed down to 3 siblings and immediately chaos broke out who would pay what share of the costs and soon the grandchildren wanted to go somewhere else instead of always the villa. And these people had plenty of money to do all the things and have spare cash.

Three years after the property was handed down it was sold.

@TheGingerCatsWhiskas We have a holiday home in the uk and it’s a decent size. I highly doubt my dc will want it! Don’t assume the next generation are the same as you. You won’t get anywhere great for that money either. I’d invest it here and buy a holiday with the interest you make every year. Better than being tied to the same place forever - that’s why we need to sell our place!

Even at bog standard 4% interest that gives you £4k a year interest (less tax on £3k of it) which is a lot of Air BnB , and without the running costs and overheads of the holiday property, or the headache of finding a plumber in the middle of the night or a new cooker on a Sunday for rental guests of your own

There is programme on Irish television called ‘cheap Irish homes’ and despite the name, it’s a really nice programme, the presenter is so lovely and shows houses and brings an expert in to give advice on the issues of the house.

anyway they did a spin off called ‘cheap European homes’ and it showed exactly what you are looking for. If you look it up on RTE player I would say it’s still there. Well worth a watch.
Good luck x

I found a link but not sure it will work:

https://www.rte.ie/player/series/cheap-european-homes/10001460-00-0000?epguid=IP000068408

all the best x

It wouldn't go very far unless you want to go somewhere fairly remote or that needed renovating.

We are currently at our place in Spain.
Yesterday we attended the residents meeting. We have owned it for 4 years, it has an expensive and bearuacratic nightmare to get licence to rent it out.
DH is planning to spend the year here. I'm going back to England at the end of the month.
Yesterday was even worse than last year for hostility against us Guiris.
Seemingly we are using the lift too much. If it's air bnb'd, the renters are a nightmare.
It has been voted on, that we and another foreign owner with a tourist licence will pay 20% extra monthly maintenance charges.
Think carefully and familiarise yourself with the fees and taxes payable when you buy

I think you are getting a lot of ignorant hate OP.

Especially from those who don't understand that in many if not most parts of the world the holiday villa/apartment market is very separate from the local housing market.

It's very hard to advise you though because while most places in Europe now use English pretty well as a second language so communication isn't a problem, there are still big cultural differences.

There is a big difference culturally between each of France, Spain or Greece or Croatia - just as an example. Just the food in the shops - that sort of thing. You need to know what you want in that respect. But each could be ideal for the right person.

Second piece of advice is make sure there is a local airport with plenty of flights from your local airport. Travel convenience (more so than time in the air) is very important.

I'm not sure holidays homes are an investment as property does not increase in value like it does in the uk. The saving is having a cheaper holiday but I wouldn't want to go back to the same place each year.

I’d look for an older property near Pisa. Nice beaches nearby, direct flights from most UK airports. I’m not sure how much £100k would go you though.

Life is short OP. Write a list of amazing holidays you want to go on while young enough to enjoy them and do one or two a year.

Maybe you’ll just want to relax somewhere in an all inclusive or maybe you’ll want to go on safari or hiking the great walk of china, or a city break in New York, or do route 66. All sound better to me than a few trips a year to the same small flat in Italy to see the same things every time. But maybe the idea of that kind of familiarity appeals to you in which case who am I to say don’t do it! Just get maximum enjoyment out of the money.

Italy.
Monterosso, mountains, northern .. look at every possibility and proximity to rail.