Have you bought property abroad for investment purposes??

[TheBlonde]

At least 3 of my mates have bought properties in Bulgaria this year
Feeling nosey and wondering how common this is?
Have you bought property abroad??

noone?

anyone?

this site is good for impatial advice. I would avoid Bulgaria TBH - go for somewhere like southern cyprus.

I would buy in Southern Italy iwy. Eastern block prices with European stability and Italian lifestyle.

Whatever you do make sure you can get your money out when you decide to sell. It's all very well making a packet on a property abroad but if you can't get the money out of the country when you sell it's a big fat waste. We had a property in France which we sold recently. It took forever, we were ripped off by everyone and getting the money back to the UK was a PITA. I know a lot of people who have had similar experiences. I would never ever do it again and we'll stick to investing in UK property. You also need to think about maintaining the property when you are here. You can't always rely on agents to do what they are supposed to.

I'm just interested in how many people are doing this

piglit, explain the rip off bit of getting money back. We complete next monday!

Where are you buying TenaLady?

No just selling at the mo, but going back soon to purchase again.

Where though Tena Lady?

Just north of Toulouse

I was just wondering I have never heard of there being a problem in repatriation of funds from France. There is a problem taking profit out of Dubai afaik but not France. It sounds like you had a lot of bad luck Piglit?

Investment property overseas can be high risk though as you are always at risk of sudden local tax changes. If a government wishes to raise money from taxes then targeting people who don't vote often comes top of the list. Also the price of property can be affected by the governments offering tax incentives too. my parents bought a property in Ireland, and then the whole area became part of a tax-incentive scheme which gives up to a 40% tax reduction for new properties, therefore cutting down the prices of "used" properties. Very nasty if you're relying on the property as a pension investment.

Yes buyig abroad is more common in our circle of friends too, but usually only where there is family overseas who are clued in to the market.

I really don't think that our situation was unusual tbh - we've got some friends in similar situations. We had to go through so many loopholes before they would pay the money over. We had to have letters from both our tax offices confirming that we were UK resident and paid tax here. We were only told about this 3 days before completion. The letters had to follow the exact wording that the French authorities suggested - in French and English and we had to courier the originals over the day before completion otherwise the tax authorities would keep most of our money and it would take months to get back. They also charge you a lot of money to work out what your tax payment should be. For example - we had to pay 3500 euros to some French tax geezer who told us that our tax on the gain was only going to be 2000 euros but we couldn't go ahead without a certificate from this geezer. And once we completed it took 2 weeks for the money to hit our bank account. Free movement of capital in the EU? My big fat arse there is....

It's not as if we are novices to the property market - dh and I have a lot of property in the UK and he has had property abroad before.

Not me, but two family members have done this. They are both quite well off and building up a portfolio of property in the UK and abroad, in lieu of a pension. I think it is fairly common nowadays?