Holiday home Spain or Portugal ?

Interesting discussions.

We are thinking of not spending our retirement here. Not the winters anyway. We’ve a few years to go, no mortgage here and a bit in savings. Pensions will also give us decent lump sums. We’ve been thinking France as we have reasonable French and have spent many many holidays there. But Spanish weather is more attractive in the winter. I don’t think we’d want to spend all the summer there but we’d keep our home in Dublin. Healthcare is a primary concern as we age, no idea what the costs are likely to be. Some friends are near Alicante and it seems attractive, they live on a golf course resort though and have to drive everywhere. Not really appealing to me.

I’d love Florida but only in the winter, the bugs and humidity plus healthcare and the fact that it’s a red state rule that out. It’ll be grand for a week or two now and then.

I’m going to start more research and plan a few winter trips to suss out places.
 
goosebump said:
I am thinking of buying on the Costa Brava, between Barcelona and the French border, close to Girona airport. Heading there next week to visit a few places.
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The problem with Girona airport is that Ryanair stop their flights there at the end of October. Flights are mostly early morning or late evening. I know that Barcelona main airport can also be used. I think that Ryanair may have stopped flights to Girona a few years back due to costs.

We have stayed in Cadaques, Llafranc, Tossa de Mar. The coast there is quite isolated but if that's what you want it is very beautiful. When we visited Cadaques we thought that it was at the end of the world. I imagine it would be very quiet in winter.

Having a good all year round airport would be necessary I would think.
 
Cervelo said:
The sunshine is for free but will you have enough for the bottomless margaritas after you pay for health insurance
More then once I've been told that the €1500 that I pay yearly to Laya wouldn't even cover a months subscription of decent policy over there

And not only that then you have to deal with the locals ;)
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Love the locals too, they are... 'colourful'!
 
Nordkapp said:
@goosebump , I emphasise with your views on damp, grey and cold Ireland, do provide an update on your visit when you return.
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Look on the bright side - hour goes forward on Sunday morning. One hour less rain to experience.

For goosebump, Portugal has an excellent healthcare system, but property prices can be high in the good areas.
 
While a good 10 years away, I think we will spend substantial amount of time abroad, in France, when we retire. I already do. I have no intention to sell my house in Ireland though and I am not sure I would buy there. As money goes, I think it's not necessarily worth it. I prefer to rent places that I chose each time... I also used to live in a touristic area where people bought houses to move to for retirement. They often complained about the difficulty to integrate with the locals and, while the first few years did go well, things became more difficult with declining health or even the death of one in the couple. They didn't really have roots in the new location and their close family was away.
 
Instead of going all in on a home in the sun, why not find a friend to buy it with and half your costs?

Agree in advance the usage eg. every second month (or 2/3 months) and alternate it every year, how long you're initially going to hold it for and and what happens if someone wants to sell their half.

There are housing and rental issues in a lot of the sunnier climes and the natives are getting really annoyed about the rising costs and the local low wages.
 
I'm totally in the rent don't buy club, agreeing with lots of the sentiment about preference to mix it up each time, different country/location keeps it exciting.
If I only ever wanted to go to one place, and was sure I'd go back year after year, then I might consider buying.
One other consideration of owning is kids/grandkids are more likely to visit, and in the longer term, ask to use it. You'd know the lay of the land, maybe accumulate some kids stuff. This may be a positive or negative!
A consideration not mentioned yet re buying is leaving it all for your family to sort out when you pass. Some might want to hold on, others to liquidate, and it might be messy in general for the Executor to arrange a foreign sale.
Anyway, nice to have these dilemmas!
 
The positives in my view is finding somewhere easily accessible all year round (e.g. where you fly to Faro or Malaga) and being able to travel with little or nothing because you can leave stuff out there.

The negatives are the carrying costs, being wedded to the one place, and tax or inheritance complications.

I oscillate between planning to own somewhere and thinking I’ll just AirBnB nice places in different destinations.
 
British and Irish holiday home owners in the Canary Islands are being hit with £2,000 fines for refusing to rent them out to tourists.

Apartment owners in the south of Gran Canaria were shocked to receive fines for living in their homes rather than renting out the flats built in complexes intended for tourists.


https://mol.im/a/13236117
 
It’s stuff like the fines in Gran Canaria worry me. Apartments are likely to be easier to lock and leave that a house too so that might have been a choice.

The idea of a longer term rental for a few winter months as a test run appeals.
 
We generally never visit the same place twice for a holiday. We would often use Nantes airport for a French holiday, staying overnight in Nantes when we arrive, and overnight before we depart. We know our way around Nantes as a result but now we are planning on earlier flights so we don't have to stay overnight, or later flights so we can travel to Nantes from a distance rather than stay there anymore. In other words we have tired of the place.

We have visited Altea in Spain a few times now. We like it. So we decided to rent longer last year to see if we would like it as much, for a longer holiday. We didn't. We even tried out different restaurants etc. to visit.......

In short, we like to keep moving, visiting and seeing new places.
 
Annieindublin said:
It’s stuff like the fines in Gran Canaria worry me.
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You can buy in a complex that has a Tourist designation (you'd probably do that if you wanted an agency to rent it out for you and occasionally use it yourself) or in a complex that has a Residential designation (you can currently rent those out but there have been talks about restricting that as buyers are AirBnBing them for high rents and actual residents not happy about the traffic in and out of them every week or so).
 
So I visited last week over a 72 hour period and saw 7 properties.

I'm targeting near bottom end of the market (< €200k) as I don't want to over commit, and I did see something I liked (note prices in Costa Brava are a bit higher in general than Costa Blanca, Dorada or Almeria)

I made an offer at 10% below asking price. The agent said an offer higher than that was already refused, and the norm in the area is 4-5% below asking price. I've read elsewhere that bids at 10-15% below asking price are the norm.

The agent also said that this is the best time of year for sellers, and they will be inclined to hold out until start of June. The place has been on the market for 4 months.

Just wondering to what extent what he is telling me is true.
 
We sold our apartment in France last year, not because we wanted to, but we felt we had to. We loved everything about the place, by the beach SW France, lots of amenities within walking distance etc. But, French inheritance tax and accompanying bureaucratic processes made us realise that it would be better for our children not to have that complication. France is beautiful, just get away from the cities, find a spot on the coast. 8 months of the year, enjoy local boulangeries, wonderful French bread, loads of French fresh fish and meat etc.
 
goosebump said:
So I visited last week over a 72 hour period and saw 7 properties.

I'm targeting near bottom end of the market (< €200k) as I don't want to over commit, and I did see something I liked (note prices in Costa Brava are a bit higher in general than Costa Blanca, Dorada or Almeria)

I made an offer at 10% below asking price. The agent said an offer higher than that was already refused, and the norm in the area is 4-5% below asking price. I've read elsewhere that bids at 10-15% below asking price are the norm.

The agent also said that this is the best time of year for sellers, and they will be inclined to hold out until start of June. The place has been on the market for 4 months.

Just wondering to what extent what he is telling me is true.
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It’s not like an estate agent would ever lie…
 
goosebump said:
So I visited last week over a 72 hour period and saw 7 properties.

I'm targeting near bottom end of the market (< €200k) as I don't want to over commit, and I did see something I liked (note prices in Costa Brava are a bit higher in general than Costa Blanca, Dorada or Almeria)

I made an offer at 10% below asking price. The agent said an offer higher than that was already refused, and the norm in the area is 4-5% below asking price. I've read elsewhere that bids at 10-15% below asking price are the norm.

The agent also said that this is the best time of year for sellers, and they will be inclined to hold out until start of June. The place has been on the market for 4 months.

Just wondering to what extent what he is telling me is true.
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The estate agent probably did you a favour without even meaning to. Seventy-two hours looking at holiday homes and deciding to buy one is likely a world record in time. I can't convince you or anybody not to buy and no matter what I say you're going to dive in anyway. Great if you can afford it and put up with the hassle of running the holiday home.

What's the biggest lie in Spain? . . . . .your cheque is in the post . . . you cant lose . . . Neither! The biggest lie in Spain is . . . . I'll never rent our holiday home out. Have no doubt about it, everybody who owns a holiday home in Spain has his/her price. They all rent out their place at some stage. Don't believe anybody who tells you differently.

If you are going to buy property in Spain, spend at least 5/6 weeks during the off season in rented accommodation in that area. You'll pick up information nobody would inform you and even Bob-down-the-pub might have something to say that you hadn't thought of. Price of property in coastal Spain is not going to jump up overnight, you know. Properties that are not sold by the end of June probably won't be sold by the end of the year.

For the record I know only two Irish people who are making a decent profit from letting out their holiday homes. Both live in Spain for the 6 most popular months, own more than one property there, do the cleans and renting themselves. Both are good handymen and can turn their skills to anything. There's more involved in making a profit from letting your place, but I'll come to that sometime as I don't want my posts deleted.
 
goosebump said:
Just wondering to what extent what he is telling me is true.
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It's really hard to know!!
I've been looking at properties over there in the Almeria region close to Mojacar for the last seven years
And yes normally you can offer well below the asking price and your offer would be accepted but it all depends on the seller and what they feel is the correct price for them to sell and some of them have what I'd think is an over inflated value of their property
They buy a property for €100K pump €50k into to bring it up to their standard and then feel two or three years later that it's worth €200k

There is in my opinion no good time to sell (or for that matter buy) a property in Spain, you just put in on the market and hope for the best
I've seen property move very quickly, like within a month or two but I also see property that I looked at seven years ago still for sale
but most the time it's in the one to two year time scale and there probably will a majority of the time have been multiple offers accepted but for one reason or another the sale fell through

I would also echo Leper's point about buying trips, buying property in Spain is not like buying property here, you need to do your homework
Going on a shopping trip or spending two weeks a year in an area is not going to be enough to make a fully informed decision
Yes you might get lucky and find the perfect property in the perfect area with perfect locals and blow ins but more often then not I've witnessed many expats try to sell the property within a couple of years due to them having a change of mind for one reason or another
I would at the very least spend time in the area first, get to know the locals, the expats.
Talk to them, they know the history of the area and will probably be able to tell you about the property you're thinking about buying warts and all and the different groups and clicks in the area

How much time do you need to spend, well I spent four winters in Lurbrin in Almeria and it was only on the final two months of the last trip when I discovered/decided that this little part of Spain was not for me
And as I've eluded to, It's easy to buy a property in Spain but it might be a different thing when it comes to selling the property
 
I get the need to do due diligence when it comes to buying property, but I don't subscribe to the view that you should agonise over a decision over a period of years either. Timing is always a factor. Markets change for better and for worse. You will always hear about bad experiences, never good ones.

I bought a property on the Costa Blanca 20 years ago on a 48 hour trip. Sold it in 3 months for a profit after owning for 4 years. A neighbour of mine bought a ex show apartment near Murcia while they were there on holiday. They are perfectly happy with it 3 years later, and would not be able to afford something similar now.

My attitude to buying property is that perfection does not exist. You always have to compromise, temper your expectations and be prepared to lose money. I take a systematic approach rather than waiting for some revelation that may or may not occur:

- Does it meet my minimum requirements?
- Can I afford it under financial stress?
- What happens if I can't sell it for 2 years?
- How does it alter my asset mix?
- Where are we in the price cycle?
- What is the level of current supply for similar property versus the size of the market?
- What level of cognitive dissonance will I experience if I don't buy it?

My inclination at the moment is to leave it with the agent to see what his next move is. My preference would be to outbid another offer rather than make an initial offer.
 
We bought our holiday home on a short visit, it helped that an expat recommended the area.

While we have not rented out our property in the last 29 years, we may in the future. Happy at the moment to ‘lock and leave’ as are a lot of our neighbours. We come and go as we please, just turn the key in the door and it's great to know it was as how we left it, just like at home.

We pay a ‘non letting tax’ on our Spanish 210 form. But if we were to rent out we would be taxed on the rental income in Spain and it also has to be declared on Irish income tax returns as foreign rental income. Revenue would also insist that as you are tax resident in Ireland you have to pay tax on the foreign rental income. There is a double taxation agreement but not sure how that would work, maybe someone else can answer that?

Be careful about renting out where there is an exclusive letting agent. Failure to use the exclusive letting agent can incur a fine of up to 30k plus the wear and tear is very high on high usage rental properties. The insurance on rental property is also different from lock and leave insurance.

There are ongoing demonstrations in Spain in connection with foreigners buying property and renting out to tourists which is limiting property access to locals, they can’t afford to either rent or purchase in the tourist hot spots. Not much different to Ireland.
 
We bought a one bed apartment in Nice city centre almost 20 years ago. We did rent it out successfully until this year but have stopped as our residents association have now banned "airbnbs". We visit Nice maybe three time per year for a total of 5 weeks. We never considered spending longer there as we would miss home and family. We are now planning on selling as the fixed costs are too high to justify. The property taxes alone are almost €3500 on a pretty small apartment. We found time there very beneficial when we were on holidays from our jobs here, but now that we are retired we need less "down time" there. While we love the Riviera and have made some friends there, we do realise that we missed out on seeing other places so its swings and roundabouts.
 
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