Sold our Spanish Holiday Home.. no regrets

When considering the costs of a holiday home you have to facture in the loss of investment returns on the capital you use. Property in Spain is devaluing and not appreciating so that annual loss can be substantial. An investment trust fund worth its salt should return you and annual 5-10% depending on the economic conditions. On a 100k holiday home that’s a loss of around £5K at worst and £10K at best.

Don’t even think about cashing in your pension pot to do it. Ahhh! It will be like marriage and the old adage ‘marry in haste repent at leisure.’

Even stashed in the bank can get your around 2-3%. I currently receive 2.67% on some deposits.

Add that to the 13% buying in taxes, furniture, annual community maintenance, council tax, none res tax, bank taxes, utility standing charges and your costs will be well in excess of £2K annually even for a modest apartment. Anything larger with its own pool and the costs escalate. All this before you start your vacation. Also any property eventually requires repair, costs for a property manager to supervise it and taxes on rental income.

Air travel costs are not cheap unless you go when nobody else wants to and then there is car hire or the cost of a second one.

Buying a holiday home is of course a matter of personal choice. However apart from buying a boat I cannot think of any other leisure pursuit that carries so much expense and unseen cost.

I have heard it said that life’s not all about money but it’s surely up there with oxygen.

MFraser.

I have sold a couple of detached villas, no community charges, one was a little hard to sell, one was easy, to be fair its down to the place and area you buy in, maybe I have been just lucky to have bought and sold in areas that I liked and hopefully others do as well, I also never buy anything, thats means anything, without thinking would someone else like it as well....Mind you I have lost out a few times on that way of thinking as well though.

I also never buy apartments, to me these seem to be the hardest to sell, but never bought one so dont know for sure.

I'm with Mr Finn here,although I fear that his advice not to spend their pension pot on a holiday home,may be too late for shall we say "the less financially sophisticated" (OK,complete muppets).

Similarly,I hear people bunnying on about "money not being everything",but they obviously don't know the right shops or have a Maserati dealership nearby.

I actually have "loadsa money",enough to last me a lifetime providing I die before next Wednesday.(is it provided,not providing? One never knows and to make a mistake is blogg suicide)

Would the blogging literary glitterati feel free to correct my mistakes.

Stay safe.Be happy

Mfrazer it sound's that you have been looking at holiday resort's, and holiday type complexes.  not urbanisation if you look on urbanisation that are in a area designed for people to live in all year round with public roads and services  you will only pay IBI to give you some idea of what you will expected to pay ,l have a large 3 bed 3 bathroom Villa with swimming pool (     not bragging.  )     on Camposol urbanisation  I paid 400eu for this years IBI and that's it we have finished pavements /finished roads/street lights and a very good community because people live on Camposol all year round when you are shown round the so called resorts and gated community type complexes that are well groomed that usually meens big community fees this is why it is so cheap to buy on the likes of Polaris World and the likes what the developer has lost on the swing's he will recoup on the roundabouts with high maintain Fee's so before you get off the starting blocks always ask how much the fees are the estate agent will only tell you about how much the property was going for a couple of years ago and what a bargain it is now he will always shy away when you ask about maintenance charge's.

This message was last edited by windtalker on 27/11/2015.

I reckon that most of the people that post on EOS are male - certainly from my experience blokes tend to be more up tight about money than their wives - and I include myself in that (most certainly ).

But most of the comment on this thread is money orientated and just because you might be obsessed with money doesn't necessarily mean that you'll necessarily handle it wisely.

And there is the wider view.  Living in Spain is far healthier than UK. Many couples will benefit emotionally from regular breaks, you can eat out and enjoy life and the culture without breaking the bank and this may keep the marriage happy (divorce isn't cheap!!!).    It's also far less expensive to live - food, petrol, labour costs, council taxes are all substantially less.

So selling your house and moving back to UK may be good for some, but for me there is a wider picture.

Thanks for all your replies, folks.  They have certainly been very helpful.  You're right, windtalker...we've been shown property in holiday type complexes, all very nice in beautiful settings but not what we're looking for.  If we buy a place, we realise it will be for the long-term.  We're hoping we have at least another ten (twenty?) years of active life left to us and who knows what the situation will be like in Spain if/when we want to sell.  So, it's looking more like a case of 'rent before you buy' for us, most likely on a small estate (urbanisation) where we have people we can talk to/get to know.  After looking at several isolated properties, we have accepted the fact that we need to be closer to our neighbours! 

The advantages from my personal point of view is that working "away" from home 90% of the time when working in the UK. The cost of living in Spain and sunshine make it worthwhile, rent or buy? Personally I think rents are cheap enough and I can't really justify buying a place at the moment. We do love where we live at the same time at 300 euros a month rent makes it difficult to actually see the advantages of buying. We can up and move tomorrow if we wanted to currently and although we love Spain and the kids are in school here I am not sure its where we want to be long-term.

There does seem to be more of a slant towards hunting down expat cashflow in the last few years and if the trend continues it may then become time to move.