The past 4 – 8 years have seen a tremendous increase in the interest,
purchase and hype of buying a property abroad. The late 90’s and early part of the 21st century has seen house prices surge in the UK to record heights, this The Myst Condo Showflat together with the ever increasing coverage of the low cost airline destinations has given the average man in the street the excess equity in their existing homes and easier access to be able to think about buying and perhaps living overseas.
We’ve probably all been on a foreign holiday to some exciting destination, be it Europe, The Americas or even further afield and admit it whenever we’ve seen a local estate agent we always make a beeline for their shop window if not to compare the prices to back in the UK then certainly to see how and what we could afford – we’ve been doing it for years without really considering the possibilities.
4 years ago the number of properties owned by people from the UK hovered at around 170,000. Now there are over 1million Brits owning second homes in Spain and France alone, and figures from the Office for National Statistics recently revealed that around 200,000 Britons travel abroad every year in search of buying a property with the intention of staying for a minimum of 12 months.
The main question we at property-abroad.com are asked by investors and holiday home seekers is “where should we buy”? A difficult question to answer because every person’s idea of owning an overseas investment or holiday property is completely different. We have a selection of questions that we ask client to consider when thinking of buying abroad which include:
•Budget – how much do you want to or can you spend. Do you need a mortgage or finance?
•Location – is location important for you? Beach, countryside or town?
•Use – personal for holidays or purely investment or a bit of both?
•Access – is getting to your property easily and cheaply important to you?
•Employment – will you need to work what is the employment situation?
•Schooling – do you need to consider such things as schooling for your children?
•Size – will a one bed apartment be big enough or do you need to consider a 4 bed town house or villa?
•Rentability – is it going to be a necessity to rent your property out to help with mortgage payments?
Although we have over 300 different websites and feature over 50,000 properties for sale in over 45 different countries abroad no two enquiries are ever the same and as such we treat each enquiry on a personal basis. We feature properties for sale directly from local estate agents and developers in every country.
What about the legalities
Buying a property abroad can be relatively straightforward – there’s nothing really complicated as long as you follow instructions and use a reliable legal representative – whether they are from the country concerned or from the UK – it will make you feel more at ease and will help things to run smoothly. We feature various guides and books on buying property abroad on our website and apart from various little peculiarities in certain countries most overseas property purchases can run smoothly.