Please talk to me if you've bought a holiday home or investment property abroad

[zafferana]

We're debating doing this, but it's overwhelming, because we have so many questions and aren't sure where to start in getting some answers.

So if you've done this, where did you start? I'm particularly interested in answers from anyone who wasn't married to a specific country/area when they started their search, because if we knew we wanted a place in Javea or Collioure it would be relatively easy, but we're open-minded, well-travelled and primarily want to make a good investment (although we'd also like to buy something that we could/would use as a holiday home sometimes). So I guess I know what we want, but not exactly where. Are there any specific websites, property agents or advisors that you found really helpful? TIA.

We bought a flat in Spain last year. We had lived abroad for 14 years and returned to the uk 8 years ago.
DH has taken up a sport and found it was played a lot in Spain and Portugal. We went out to Spain and looked at numerous properties.
we narrowed the search down to two towns and chose the nicest.
We had a sum of money left to him after his dad’s death. The best part of it is the flat can be rented to Spanish people for 3 months of the year which will cover the cost of the monthly maintenance charge
we used a solicitor based in the uk for the legal stuff and have been put a couple of times already.

I should add, we considered buying in Thailand as we had lived there for four years.
we only didn’t because non Thai people can not own land. We could have bought a flat, but not a house