Search results

If you have a valid contract to buy the property at the agreed price then you would seem not to have a leg to stand on. Look at it from the develper's point of view -- if the property had increased greatly in the interim, how would you feel if he tried to wriggle out of it? A contract is just...

Vista capital is a timeshare outfit that buys up cheap property, often in areas where the market has slumped. They then persuade buyers to purchase "fractional ownership" of these properties, with all the usual promises about free holidays for life and the "ease" with which the timeshare (sorry...

Mickryan72 is right about there being great deals in Spain, but we'll have to disagree on our approach. There is some activity in the market, but it really is a tiny fraction of what went on in the busy days. I know of numerous agencies that are either closed or are down to a skeleton staff just...

I'd say the Spanish will take your arm off if you come offering to buy property there right now. The market is on the floor, there's very little activity going on in Spain -- a bit like here. Having said that, if you hanker after a good holiday home, this is a great time to buy in Spain. I would...

The OP asked a very interesting question, whether anyone had recently sold in Bulgaria and if so, whether they got any kind of decent price. From the responses, it appears that nobody has sold recently, or if they tried to sell, that they didn't get any kind of good offers. It would be very...

I wouldn't dream of trying this on my own; the potential for screwing it up is high when you don't speak Hungarian. A job like this won't cost a lot if you use a good lawyer. Penny pinching around things like title is not a good strategy, IMO.

In the current climate, if the tenant is paying on time and not wrecking the place, I wouldn't worry about a few snakes. I wouldn't like the idea of having them in my own house, but the thing you have to remember about rental property is just that -- you don't have to live in the house, it's...

That's valid, to a point. However there is a baseline below which materials can not go that is linked to factors such as oil prices etc, and that is also true of wage costs in construction. People will not work in a hard and dangerous job for the same rates that they could get from social...

Agree with previous poster re bubble markets and stock indices etc. However there is an additional factor that applies in the case of residential property. When the price of property drops below the cost of site acquisition plus construction costs, then buying property becomes attractive because...

It's unlikely they will come after you if the loan has been secured on the property in Riga, but I stress the word "unlikely." In the UK during the crash in the late 1980s I knew a few people who walked away from houses and posted the keys back to the lenders, and they subsequently got...

If we can leave opinions aside for a minute and deal with facts please. The OP asked for advice, and has got good advice from a numner of people with no axe to grind, i.e. rent for a while and see how you like the place. No point in rushing in while the trend is still downwards and the market...

Agree with this poster, try renting to see how you like it. Prices aren't going anywhere for a long time yet. A word of caution. Crete gets a lot of rain in wintertime, so maybe it's not the best place to try to escape our weather, but if you like the place then that's half the battle. Renting...

If you have a buyer in your hand, that's a lot more than most agents have right now. Almost all buyers in the market are looking for fire-sale stuff, although I have heard that ordinary sales to first-time buyers etc are starting to pick up again after a disastrous few months. Still, if you have...

Sounds expensive, regardless of standard. In the current climate you are much better off buying a second-hand place, forget any thoughts of buying new right now.

I'm no expert on Hungarian tax laws, but it occurs to me that if you bought these properties within a company structure with money raised by mortgaging other property in Ireland, then you effectively loaned the money to the company. In that case, rents paid to you can be treated as repayment of...

In a recession, it can be hard to picture a situation when markets return to some kind of normality. That is the essence of a property slump; it becomes a downward spiral that can only be broken when confidence returns. As sure as the sun rises though, at some time in the future the markets will...

Getting earners fully into the tax net is one of the most important tasks facing the government in Hungary. As I understand it, a lot of companies are actually vehicles by which ordinary working people get paid, with consequent tax losses to the exchequer. Romania has recently introduced a flat...

To give an example, the Marbella area is full of distressed sales right now. I know of somebody who bought a 3-bed 3-bath apartment in that area a few weeks ago for 180k, it had been sold for around 400k just two years ago. It included all furnishing and was ready to let, and the owner has a...

As an aside to this thread, does anyone know of a place doing Brian Cowen masks?

I'm not at all bitter, in fact I'm very happy that I followed my judgement and kept my money out of Bulgaria. My first impressions of the place were bad, and every subsequent visit just reinforced my view that it was an economic basket case. This forum is about property investment; i.e. it...