Anyone know about leaseback ski property schemes?

[Linguaphile]

Have just come across this and it sounds like a really great way to actually make a hassle-free investment out of a ski property. Is it a scam and too good to be true? What’s the catch (other than the obvious limit on how many weeks per year you can use it)? Does anyone have personal experience or know of someone who has done it?

We did this. It isn’t a scam. And no catch apart from the limit on weeks. We can’t leave personal items in the apartment either so it’s not a second home. But for what we wanted it works well. Happy to try and answer specific questions if that helps.

Thanks @MrsWobble3! That’s good to know. How long have you had the property and has it been giving the returns promised? How was getting the mortgage? Sorry, lots of questions! It sounds really good for us as we’re mainly interested in having a decent investment that will also provide a few weeks of free ski lodging, not a second home.

We’ve had it two years now. We didn’t buy it primarily as an investment so the returns weren’t the main reason for doing it - we didn’t want the hassle of managing it. But we do get an income from it which more than covers the costs. The mortgage was easy but we used a broker so that helped. Our apartment is part of a development so the management scheme covers all of them. I know someone who bought an individual apartment who looked into a scheme and decided it was better to manage it themselves but I don’t know the detailed reasons so it probably depends to some extent on what you are thinking of buying. An additional factor for us was that as a new build there was a 20% VAT charge on the purchase price but if you rent it out you can reclaim it. And a leaseback makes that much easier.