Should we buy a Holiday lodge?

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We have stayed at this lovely Uk resort twice and loved it. It's about an hour away from elderly parents and great location with lots to do and facilities. Seems to be a lot of investment as they are building more
Lodges. It's about a 3 hour drive from our home but we both wfh and could spend time here when dc are not in school.

I've been thinking about maybe buying a lodge for our convenience when visiting family and also holidays ourselves. We have a flat we can sell to fund it with a small mortgage but the site fees are
10k a year but they reckon you can cover that easily with the rental of approx 2k a week in medium to high season.
The lease is 100 years so not sure what happens after that .. presumably can extend?

Anyone have any experience of this?

It's a massive waste of money, you won't ever make money on it, and you're unlikely to break even. On 10k a year, you can have some nice breaks away with no stress. The owners of the site can dictate when you need to update the van/ lodge, and they can and often do increase site fees year on year. You'll also find a little charge here and a little charge there, my dsis had one, never again, she literally couldn't give the bloody thing away. Luckily it was some years ago, and she handed the van back to the site owners, but she had to pay them to take it back! so she 'only' lost 12K. But it's just not worth the hassle. I think you would massively regret it.

You aren't going to have anything of value to pass on in 20 years, let alone 100. This isn't a proper brick built house with foundations that is going to stand the test of time.

On 10k a year, you can have some nice breaks away with no stress.

And you get to keep the capital, too!

Nope

What about tax on the rental income too

Look at Holiday Park action group on Facebook. There are numerous heartbreaking examples of the huge losses people have had as a result of buying lodges/statics.

I think your looking at this like your buying a second home talking about 100 years etc. Lodges don’t last 20 years let alone 100. Then you have to pay to upgrade the lodge on the site your still paying £10K plus a year on. £200k in 20 years time, by which you could have paid off another mortgage on a small flat etc.

This.

If you keep it for 100 years the maintainence alone is £1,000,000!?!

The only people I know who ended up "up" on a deal like this was a family, pulling together - a set of grandparents, who took their DGC every summer and other school breaks for pretty much the whole time they were off school as a childcare solution for their 3x adult DC.

Because although they were not making money on the lodge, that was more than offset by the amount everyone was saving on the childcare. And the DGC had a fantastic time. That can probably only work in families where everyone is pretty laid back though!

These properties are the next timeshare scandal

Unless you are going to be using at least 50 days a year, don't even consider it.

As a caravan owner I know these things drop like a stone in value. Even if you wish to pass on to your family could they sustain £10k a year or possibly more as prices rise over time to keep it going?

If you do wish to invest then look at a caravan. Approx £50k outlay plus siting and connection fees. They have usually a 15 year life span and fees of 3/4 k a year plus maintenance and utilities so still a significant outlay.

We are currently in a situation where the site is being sold so we may have fee increases or a cap on the age of our van (which we currently don't have).

It's not really a long term investment but if you are prepared to lose money then it's worth looking into if very carefully at the T&Cs if you have the money.

I was going to do exactly this until I looked into it .
I ended up buying a lovely touring caravan and put it on a permanent pitch .
Beauty of that is I can move it elsewhere /sell it ,if I the site fees increase to a level I can't easily afford .
I know it's a depreciating asset ,but the price was a fraction of what a lodge costs and I still have a "holiday place " to go to whenever I like .

Doubt that - they've been going in this form for as long or longer than time-shares have been around. I can remember That's Life doing an expose about one (local to where I was then living, so stuck in my mind) back in the 1970s.

There's nothing "next" about it - it's been like this for decades, and it's simply a case of reading what you're getting in to.

They don't hard-sell with unfair techniques and demonstrable misrepresentations as happened in the time-share 1980s scandals.

Have a look at the Holiday Park Action Group Facebook page. Some of the stories where people have lost all their retirement funds are heartbreaking.
A better option is to buy a decent sized touring caravan and have it on a seasonal pitch.

My friend and her DH did this - bought a lodge on a beautiful lakeside that was about an hour from them - they had all the same assurances about rentals covering the annual costs. To cut a long story short: the rentals were nowhere near as guaranteed as they were led to believe, they lost a lot of money and had to sell quite quickly. When she told me the story she was quite upset, because she'd persuaded her DH to do it and thought it would be a lovely little bolthole for them and their DC when it wasn't rented out.

the site fees are
10k a year but they reckon you can cover that easily with the rental of approx 2k a week in medium to high season.

So exactly the times your kids are out of school and you would want to do an extended stay…

I think you would be mad to sell a flat (where presumably the rent covers the mortgage) which is an appreciating asset to fund a lodge, a depreciating asset.

you won’t get it for 100 years. The rules generally say that after a certain number of years the lodge needs to be replaced (by you, at your cost). The 100 years is the rental of the pitch, and comes with conditions. Plus if the owner sells the annual fees may go up.

relatives had one for about 10 years and to be fair they used it a lot and enjoyed having it, but ultimately sold up when they wanted to use their time to go elsewhere

Been there. We purchased the year before our daughter was born. 2.5 hrs away so drove down about 3pm on a Friday and back on a Sunday night. Let it during peak season. Probably made about 10k in 8 years as there’s lots of expense. Advertising, booking fees, Cleaning, gas checks, furnishings, new boiler, rates, site fees etc. we lost money on selling but not a huge amount. Think we sold at the right time. Most sites say you must change the home after 12 years. Unfortunately no legislation to cover holiday homes like this so they can change the rules at anytime. Buyer beware!