Holiday home overseas

[Marygold78]

We are considering purchasing a holiday home overseas, 2 ours flight, somewhere sunny and near the sea to go for long weekends and holidays; escape the hustle and bustle of London; we both have busy and demanding jobs.

I am looking for advice for people who have holidays home; what things do we need to consider? Is it a drain on your finances or do you make money from holiday rentals? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

If the property is within the Schengen zone you need to consider if there are any implications for extended personal due to the 90/180 rule, whether you'll need Schengen Visa/residency permits etc.

Yes, we are allowed to buy but only stay within the allowed 90 days over 180. We will still go to holidays in order places so the idea is to rent it while we are not there and hopefully retire there in a few years.

Hoping rentals will cover maintenance costs, bills, etc.

Makes sense, good luck..

If you spend 500k plus in Spain you'll get a golden visa, so the 90/180 won't apply.

I would suggest Barcelona (or on the beach very close by: Gava, Casteldefelds,), because you will always find people wanting to rent even in the cold and rainy months, whereas somewhere more seasonal such as the Cote d'Azur in France, winter is dead, and I say this as a Monegasque.
It is also very cheap for you to fly there if you want to go for a weekend.

@Marygold78

While I'm here, on the subject of flights..

If you are relying on being able to do multiple visits using two hour flights beware of choosing somewhere that is only serviced direct from the UK by a single carrier. Make sure you have more than one string to your bow when it comes to travel to and fro.

Reason being if that carrier pulls off the route for whatever reason -and it does happen, because networks are not set in stone or concrete forever- your quick nip over for a weekend can become next to impossible and/or involve going non-direct.

It was a phenomena that caused a lot of grief for a lot of people when the LoCos expended rapidly into all sorts of regional airports in Western Europe maybe twenty years back..all was fine until those airlines changed their route network as the economic picture changed, both in the UK and on the mainland.

Plus the environmental impact of all those flights will be horrendous. But screw everyone else as long as you get your home in the sun, eh?

@BonnieGlasses you sound jealous.

@Marygold78

Sorry but another P.S.

Consider/factor in getting to/from foreign airport to your home in the Sun...will public transport/taxis be an option? If it is not you may have to maintain a car overseas and park it at the airport when you head back to the UK...

Long term car parking is chuffing expensive at my nearest airport and the local police rightly take a dim view of cars being parked up for weeks at a time in the adjacent industrial and residential areas.

It's a holiday home thread, in a holiday forum. Bore off if you have nothing useful to say.

If you do this OP, enjoy it! Nothing wrong with living the life you want if you can afford it!

Agree on the flights comment. Parents bought a place in France without realising the flights were summertime only. They could drive so it wasn't a huge problem
But worth considering.

Parents bought a place in France without realising the flights were summertime only.

They weren't alone... it's still fairly common to hear/see howls of anguish on some living overseas forums when the winter airline schedules get released, shortly thereafter followed by worries about what if any services will be reinstated in the Summer.

It can be nice to be off the beaten track but there are hazards.

Will you really go there for long weekends and holidays though? We’ve had two holiday homes (separately) one in UK and one ski resort in Europe. We used neither regularly due to work commitments, kids’ commitments and general faff factor. We spent a small fortune on kitting the properties out with furniture, equipment, white goods, tv’s etc. You will have the usual utilities to pay. The UK property attracted over 100% council tax due to being a second home. Hence why we sold. We didn’t go down the rental route with either, inviting friends and family to use them.

If we had decided to rent commercially we would have had the cost of management, housekeeping and laundry etc and would not have been able to be spontaneous: you’d have to block out the time you wanted to use at the beginning of the year, not exactly allowing spontinaiety. Plus tax on any profit, local accountant required for that at additional cost.

If you’ve got the money to buy a property plus frequent flights, why not just save yourself a headache and use Airbnb etc for your weekends away

It can often be much more hassle than it's worth.

You can end up spending your time there doing maintenance jobs or gardening rather than being on holiday.

You have to find a reliable agent, so you are better off near major resorts rather than in the sticks.

You are subject to the local council changing the rules with regards to lettings. Many places are putting restrictions on Airbnb type lettings.

Retiring to the EU is no longer a viable option unless you have an EU passport so think carefully about the future.

taxes and inheritance laws

plus local laws arounds planning permission, occupancy, liability insurance, repossession, subletting etc.

alsio the new energg efficiency laws coming in in the eu. might be very costly (and unsightly) for some types of property.

Thank you everyone; we are thinking in the Algarve Portugal; lots of flights from London. I find the long English winters very depressing so looking for somewhere to scape and recharge. We can’t move permanently yet due to work, schools, etc.

It will be less than 500k so not elegible for golden visa.

If we have a place there it will be just getting our passports and tickets without needing to pack or look for airbnb so just get on a train, plane and be there.

If we de decide we are not using much we will rent it permanently.

Leisure flying is very likely to become more and more expensive and limited as we look to mitigate the climate impacts of it. Shortish-haul flights may be the first to go/be drastically reduced as you can do the same journey by train. France has already banned internal flights if you can get there in 2.5 hours by train - this movement will continue and is likely to get more extensive. I don't know what timeframe you're considering but this is worth thinking about.

Is this the end of short-haul flights? How sustainability is shaping the future of air travel | National Geographic

The PIL had a holiday home in Turkey for many years which post retirement they spent a lot of time at.
Long term, one of the worst things they ever did as they had no social life at home as they were away 6 months a year and their friendships over there were totally dependent on sitting on the beach together and nothing more. They thought their children/ GC would use it but that didn't work, and rental agencies needed more availability and standard than they wanted to give.
They had two houses to do everything for, a nightmare of local bureaucracy there, the first day of any trip was always having to clean, air, wash and then the same to leave it. Being a long distance meant nasty surprises when getting there to find a leaking roof/ blocked drains or whatever.

I would say that owning a property abroad is more hassle than the packing and booking of an Airbnb each time you go.

Think about maintenance. A garden/pool sounds great until you have to pay a gardener etc. Or spend half your holiday tidying up. We have a terraced house with a small roof terrace. Lock up and leave. Very easy. Friends had a house with a big garden and a fabulous view. The cost of maintenance pretty much wiped out any profits from rent.

What’s important to you? Access to shops/bars/beach? We are in the centre of a small town so shops and bars are on the doorstep (literally) but it can be a bit noisy in summer. Our beach (on a lake) is a free bus or bike ride/short drive away. We’re also near ski resorts which is important for us. Think airports and access. We have a train station in town and that makes a huge difference.

Things are changing in countries with a decent high speed rail net work but even the French ban has had to be watered down (for example depending on circumstance it's still possible to fly Bordeaux-Paris with AF)...

Quite a few major French cities are not on the TGV network so for them the shuttles to Paris are going to be operating for a long time to come and think we are ways off train replacing flights between London and the Algarve.

I think if you are planning to use it AND rent out, you’ll need to buy carefully and keep it in rent - ready condition. Unless money isn’t an issue, you’ll probably need to do the sums as to whether it is viable as a rental as well. Will you have a pool? A garden? Both these make the maintenance more tricky and much more expensive than for an appartement, where you just need to keep it clean, do the changeovers, and pay your building fees.

my parents have a holiday house in the south of France. 2 hours from Scotland but another hour from the airport: that’s €120 each way for a taxi. They have a pool and a large garden to maintain. The garden is okay, but it’s not family friendly - no fence to a steep drop at the back, so couldn‘r easily be rented to families. Ditto the pool: it’s old, needs quite a lot of looking after, the cover is cumbersome and it’s not fenced off from the house - again not great for families. They have decorated to their tastes, filled the cupboards with their stuff (crap), filled the garage with more stuff… they’ve put up with having no dishwasher and a kind of scruffy garden etc as it’s fine for them. The village itself is very quiet and not very pretty. All this suits my parents fine - but it would be very hard to rent.

We have friends who’ve bought a holiday house nearby and who do rent it. The village itself is very picturesque, as is the house. The garden is a very simple outdoor eating / bbq area, gravel and a few pots. No pool (the village has a swimming hole, their place is directly opposite). They completely renovated the house in a very neutral style, it’s lovely and very well-equipped. They keep one cupboard locked with their own stuff in it. Everything else is guest ready.

My friend's parents had a holiday home in France. She and her siblings got utterly sick and fed up of visiting the same place every holiday. They wanted to go elsewhere, but no, same old. Safe and relaxing for the adults, boring after a while for the DC.
We have holidayed far and wide with the DC growing up and the pleasure of us all exploring new places together has been amazing.
That's half the fun.

We bought a place in Spain 4 years ago and it was the best thing we ever did. Picked an airport that had lots of flights all year round, looked with 30 mins of airport, spent 18 months staying in different areas and finally found a small village on the coast that we love. Have an old car that's kept near the airport and the company fetches it to us on our flight arrival and collects on return, costs €300 a year. Overall probs cost us about €2500 a year to keep our house. Only rent to family and friends occasionally.

Oh and I know you’ve considered the post brexit rules, but remember if you’re travelling within Europe it all adds up. It’s not an issue for us now, but may catch my DH out post retirement. I’ve an EU passport but we will need to check the rules carefully for him.

i love our house. People thought we were bonkers to buy a wreck in an unknown town, but we have a lot of repeat visitors!