Buying a Property Abroad - what's it all about
The past 4 - 8 years have seen a tremendous increase in the interest, purchase and
hype of buying 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 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 on holiday every year often dreaming of buying property abroad 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 overseas
investment property or off
plan developments is completely different. We have a selection of questions
that we ask client to consider when thinking of buying property 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 70,000 properties
for sale in over 50 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 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.