advice please - can I use my houe in another country towards getting a mortgage?

bubblesmoney

sunny_skies wrote: »

wow bubbles - this sounds very similar to what I'm trying to do: make money by (now, I don't know the official terms yet I'm afraid!) using what I could get homeloan-wise here in the UK to buy in cheaper places.

I don't know yet whether this is a better strategy than using all that money and pooling it in one market (i.e. UK market) instead of spreading it across various property markets - which would surely help the risk?

The way I see it, I'm not planning on staying in the UK for longer than the next five years, if I was maybe it'd be a better strategy to get in on the housing market here ... the only reason I'm even thinking about it at all is because I'd just like to live in my own home! :think:

Anyway any advice would be appreciated, and bubbles any lessons you learned from your experiences buying many properties abroad would be really interesting! :A

my experiences are just experiences. i wouldnt advice any others to follow that risky route. it wasnt planned by me, it just happened, parents gifted me money long ago and the properties in question were bought thru that long ago. land was recommened by a few friends. all were profitable. although the ones we sold over the years later jumped in price much more after we sold out:mad: . i cant even dream of buying it back now. the few we were lucky to not sell have done well. but there have been troubles with encroachment, threats of encroachment etc for land and did have to make a distress sale once for lot less than market value (even though i didnt make a loss) as i didnt have the time or people to do things for me while i was working in uk. i know about others whose land was encroached upon, court cases takes years even decades in many countries and pocessions will be nine-tenths of the law sometimes and staying in uk and buying elsewhere pocessions is not an option, also know about other peoples sales where deeds werent perfect and which affected value or even ability to sell land at all later. some sellers cheat and sell to many buyers at same time and disappear with money when they didnt own the land in 1st place, so they run away with 10-30%deposit and potential buyer in lurch. if vacant land then encroachment has happened to others where squatters come in or others build houses on ur land and u have to run to courts or make distress sale at loss to squatter or pay percentage of sale to squatter. and these squatters can be very well connected politically and be very professional about these things. rent control in many countries can affect ur property, many places property can be forcibly taken over by govt authorities and reneted out for a pittance and u can never hope to ever recover property or to get adequate rent and worse u will be liable for repairs to property when the rent wont even cover the annual property tax and rent can even now be fixed in some places at 1940-1950 rates!!!! so god forbid if the rent control authorities in such states ever get hold of ur house. to get ur house back u should be actually wanting to live there and even then it needs a longwinded process to get it back or u need to find ways to get it back or to prevent it going into rent control in the 1st place. not everyones cup of tea. too many headaches. not to mention tenants from hell, have had that wonderful experience too, literally they almost destroyed the house, cost us more repairing it than we got from rent and we had to sell as i couldnt spare time to keep checking on the property as rent control got their eye on it so made a quick sale as from my earlier experiences with that dept i didnt want anymore dealings with them. know others who have lost full 5 floor buildings via rent conntrol etc and getting paid 1940s-1950s rent even now and they havent been able to vacate tenants in 3-5 decades!!! and owner had to move out of property to rent out his home there commercially to be able to afford upkeep or building!!! as he was liable for the upkeep.

so unless u know the (any)market really well locally and have someone there locally to give u a hand it is very risky. even if u have someone locally, how ever close u know them sometimes money has a way with turning people which we learnt the hard way many moons ago. ever been in court and spent on legal fees etc for more than a decade and literally given up on property that was rightfully yours because of delays in courts etc and called it a day. family been there, done that etc. it is not everyones cup of tea, u could make money but u could also loose all ur money. no risk no gain.

i am only considering it on a very small scale and willing to lose that investment completly if and when i do invest again. even if i do consider investing i will only do that where i know people who can keep an eye on the property otherwise i wouldnt even dream of it, doing any such thing without local help is extremely risky. something which i would never do as i dont have the time or the money or the patience to handle things when they go wrong which they mostly do in many ways when u invest abroad. so be prepared for all the hassles that are part and parcel of buying property abroad before u even dream of buying abroad and then think a hundred times over. if u have any doubts after that then dont buy abroad in the 1st place, u r just asking for trouble.

sunny_skies

Thanks bubbles - letting out our place overseas has been a challenge. The thing that most frustrates me is the lack of control I feel even if only a small monetary amount is in question! :mad: However so far we've gained £10k in about 6 months though - principally because I bought from my brother, we didn't use estate agents so he knocked a lot off the price, and what with the Football World Cup happening (we hope!) in 2010. But there's been lots of times where we wanted to just throw in the towel!

But then I guess no one ever said aiming to be financially independent before retirement age was ever going to be easy :rotfl: