Buying property abroad

Got talking to a group of lads who all bought themselves a holiday home in southern Spain next door to each other.

They said they paid around £17k each and as they all work in the building trade they’re able to go over a few times a year to do work on them and have a lads holiday and then they’ll eventually get the rest of their families over when all the work’s done.

Sounded mint but it looked like a fuck ton of work from the photos they showed me. Does anyone here own a second property abroad?
 


I have done. Has to be done with extreme caution really. Some countries are massively corrupt and buyers (especially foreign) have little rights. Laws are a minefield. I lost a lot of money but got out before I lost more.
Of course that's not the experience everywhere. But lots of places are corrupt as fuck.
 
My uncle has one in France, paid next to nowt for it, it was just a shell basically. Went over 4 or 5 times a year for a month at a time and now it's an amazing 3 bedroom house. He's retired and had the time plus he's good at all that, I find it incredible that he bought a pile of bricks essentially and built himself a house. It's quite sad tho that just as he's finished it hes starting to feel old and instead of enjoying it he's thinking of selling it.
 
We had some cottages/chalets that we used to rent out right on the Danube valley - sold them a few year back because of a change in regulations on renting stuff out made it not worth the time and hassle
 
My uncle has one in France, paid next to nowt for it, it was just a shell basically. Went over 4 or 5 times a year for a month at a time and now it's an amazing 3 bedroom house. He's retired and had the time plus he's good at all that, I find it incredible that he bought a pile of bricks essentially and built himself a house. It's quite sad tho that just as he's finished it hes starting to feel old and instead of enjoying it he's thinking of selling it.

f***ing hell that is sad.
 
My uncle has one in France, paid next to nowt for it, it was just a shell basically. Went over 4 or 5 times a year for a month at a time and now it's an amazing 3 bedroom house. He's retired and had the time plus he's good at all that, I find it incredible that he bought a pile of bricks essentially and built himself a house. It's quite sad tho that just as he's finished it hes starting to feel old and instead of enjoying it he's thinking of selling it.
The thought of not being able to enjoy what I want to do full time until I'm retired is a sad thing, and it makes me quite depressed regularly. How old is your uncle?
 
17k is not bad when you consider what people pay for caravans at Haven sites.

Not sure where they were exactly but it was somewhere near Granada. They said it was less than an hour north into the Sierra Nevada mountains for skiing and less than an hour in the other direction and they were at the beach.
 
The thought of not being able to enjoy what I want to do full time until I'm retired is a sad thing, and it makes me quite depressed regularly. How old is your uncle?
No it's not that at all to be honest. He's never married of had kids, he's always been an active handyman and has had hobbies and interests all his life, building model boats, he's always had an incredible garden, he's got a Morris minor that he's done up from a rust bucket. He finished his house about 3yrs ago, done the whole lot himself, he's 78 now and he's starting to show his age a bit. He loved doing up his house and has pride in showing us his videos of the work. It's amazing what he can do to be honest, I'd struggle to wire a plug.
 
Aye. Bought a place last year in the algarve. Mentioned it on the holiday villa thread. Not a massive place but big enough for us.
Pretty straightforward once the offer was accepted. One good thing is there's a prommissory contract that gets agreed before purchase, you pay a 10% deposit and lose it if you pull out but the seller has to pay you double.
It's somewhere we plan on spending more and more time as we get older.
Edit, an awful lot of places there are owned in offshore company names. The only hitch we had was because we wanted to buy it outright in our names. We wanted to do what was right in our minds. Cost a little bit more in tax but morally worth it.
 
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Got a place in Spain. Bought it to please the (ex)wife back at the height of the property "boom".
Two years after we got the keys, the market bottomed.
I've still got it (in my name, now), renting it out to friends and family.
Also got a couple of online portals advertising it to randoms which can be a bit of a chew on.

Two big lessons learned.
  1. Be aware of property market trends.
  2. Don't get married.
 
I have done. Has to be done with extreme caution really. Some countries are massively corrupt and buyers (especially foreign) have little rights. Laws are a minefield. I lost a lot of money but got out before I lost more.
Of course that's not the experience everywhere. But lots of places are corrupt as fuck.
My in laws have a place in southern Spain, and your post is spot on. They were ok, but they know many people who it turns out, own a piece of paper, not a house and certainly not any land.
They had no idea they'd been ripped off, often for 5-10 years, while the courts battled with the building firms who tried to disappear with the money, and eventually handing the titles back to the banks who were owed money.
And then the banks contact the "owners" to invite them to buy "their" houses. For a second time.
 
My in laws have a place in southern Spain, and your post is spot on. They were ok, but they know many people who it turns out, own a piece of paper, not a house and certainly not any land.
They had no idea they'd been ripped off, often for 5-10 years, while the courts battled with the building firms who tried to disappear with the money, and eventually handing the titles back to the banks who were owed money.
And then the banks contact the "owners" to invite them to buy "their" houses. For a second time.
Yep same issues in Cyprus. Developers take loans from the banks for Land and sell houses with no entitlement to the land. Developers don't deliver on what they promise but there no recourse for people.

It's awful. You have people, no doubt like your in-laws, who have put their life savings in to them and lose it all. Even oweing money to the foreign banks. We were young and basically lost the profit we made from a house sale in the UK. Tens of thousands and gutting but wasn't the result of years of hard work if you know what I mean. I say I owned a property abroad. Technically I didn't as never completed on it.
 
Got talking to a group of lads who all bought themselves a holiday home in southern Spain next door to each other.

They said they paid around £17k each and as they all work in the building trade they’re able to go over a few times a year to do work on them and have a lads holiday and then they’ll eventually get the rest of their families over when all the work’s done.

Sounded mint but it looked like a fuck ton of work from the photos they showed me. Does anyone here own a second property abroad?

Nah but I seen a 1 bed apartment on Mar Menor golfie for like 30k euros thought about jacking everything in and just gan play golf and work in a bar till the end of my days

I’m 29 :lol:
 
Not sure where they were exactly but it was somewhere near Granada. They said it was less than an hour north into the Sierra Nevada mountains for skiing and less than an hour in the other direction and they were at the beach.
Some bargains inland in all countries if you're handy,speaking the lingo is a plus too.Me and the lads do a motorbike trail holiday every year in Crete,right into the ctr of the island ,there's a one for sale for 16000 euros which i know the spot well ,great spot but not "holiday" at all
 
Nah but I seen a 1 bed apartment on Mar Menor golfie for like 30k euros thought about jacking everything in and just gan play golf and work in a bar till the end of my days

I’m 29 :lol:
Every time I go to my in-laws place, I think the same thing mate!

Yep same issues in Cyprus. Developers take loans from the banks for Land and sell houses with no entitlement to the land. Developers don't deliver on what they promise but there no recourse for people.

It's awful. You have people, no doubt like your in-laws, who have put their life savings in to them and lose it all. Even oweing money to the foreign banks. We were young and basically lost the profit we made from a house sale in the UK. Tens of thousands and gutting but wasn't the result of years of hard work if you know what I mean. I say I owned a property abroad. Technically I didn't as never completed on it.
Sorry you got fucked over mate. Thankfully my in-laws bought through a middle-man who knew what he was doing (Gus Robinson), so they were ok. But people on their development weren't all as lucky.
 

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