Can't buy in UK - so where else?

Stuart_D_3

If you are still considering buying abroad, have a look at Calabria in southern Italy. It is an emerging market within an established country and prices are very reasonable compared no northern Italy and Spain.

I was there a few months ago and ended up purchasing a beachfront penthouse apartment for under £100k. The area is benefiting from mass regenearation as it has traditionally been the poorest part of Italy. Beautiful scenery, weather and easy connection to the UK make it very appealing. Various newspaper articles, including one from the Sunday Times in January of 2007 tip the area as the next big thing with double digit annual growth predicted.

Check it out for yourself. Ryanair fly direct from London to Lamezia and flights can be cheap if booked early enough. We went ahead with an agent called First step abroad who offered us a free inspection trip.

3dsmills

Hi All,

I won 2 tickets to A Place in the Sun Live exhibition, with Real People magazine, 28th-30th Sept at the NEC, didn't realise i'd entered it and i'm not interested in moving overseas.

So, if anyone is planning on going and would like the tickets, PM me your details and i'll post them to you.

Hopefully will save someone a tenner!

Thanks

Sarah

PasturesNew

EagerLearner wrote: »

I want to be able to have more than a studio flat for my £130k mortage!

There's lots of places in the UK where you can buy 3+ bedroom houses (nice ones, nice areas, where there are jobs) for this budget.

Ever really looked about?

tweetyshells

I'm a little confused, you are considering moving to another country you haven't even been to yet but you aren't willing to move to another part of the uk? Bizarre.

PasturesNew

The average age of FTBs is in their 30s.
My dad bought his first house when he was 38 in 1970
I bought my first house when I was 40, which I've just sold as I couldn't afford to run it.
The thing is: throughout your life there will be changes that you can't even imagine ... and maybe in the next 20 years your time will come.
You never can tell what the future brings.
Where's the rush?
Renting is cheaper. Rental properties are nicer now than they were.

And: I am in the camp of "prices are about to fall big time". So I am waiting to buy my next house ... while living in a studio flat. There's nothing wrong with studio flats. They certainly stop you buying !!!!!! you don't need (no room for it) - and the bills are SO low you've still got enough left over for a takeaway treat every now and then

CFC

Eager Learner, so you can in fact afford a small place for £130k but feel that it's unfair that you can't buy a nice three bedroomed place in a decent area for £130k? Yet you say you're desperate to get on the housing ladder...this seems a contradiction in terms. A studio flat or a one bedroomed flat is a place on the housing ladder. You buy it, you put up with it for a couple of years, you sell it at a profit which goes towards your deposit on your next place. I can see there's even a two bed in Brigton at 130k. Unless you truly believe that house prices are going to go very nastily downhill, buy when you can and what you can if you want to buy. Certainly not everybody does want to buy, and that's fine if renting somewhere nicer than you can afford to buy is what you want to do.

You're investing your money which you desperately need for a deposit in funds which may, or may not, pay off? You might as well go down the casino and stick it all on black. You're braver than I, I'll have to give you that. I was always told, don't gamble with money that you can't afford to lose. Please make a considered judgement on your investments bearing this in mind. You can save £400 a month; and by scrimping and self denial you put away £4800 a year. Can you afford to lose that money?

buglawton

House prices for a nondescript semi are now around 8 times annual salary where they were once 3 times (early 80s). That massive land mass next to us, Europe, has hardly changed as far as this ratio is concerned during the same years to now. During the 80s I remember reading about the Japanese city dwellers and their comically high property prices and cramped quarters - now the joke is on us.

150 years ago there was a mass migration of all British classes to pastures new and far away - then it might have been politics and economics, now maybe it is economics that should make us start to feel adventurous.

I recently met a Romanian who is currently working in the UK. He has applied for & got the points to emigrate to Canada with wife & child. Why would he move so far? Living space!

So I can understand anyone who says: hesitate before getting hung up on the UK housing ladder.

nollag2006

buglawton wrote: »

So I can understand anyone who says: hesitate before getting hung up on the UK housing ladder.

... and watch as the ladder keeps moving away from you while house prices keep going up and up.

C_Ronaldo

To the OP why did you choose the 3 countries

Wig

Have you considered buying at auction? It is something I am open to and you can pick up properties from 30K upwards, with plenty of properties which are habitable and clean selling for between 40 - 55K. I use Barnard Marcus in London to see if there are any little gems he has in my local area, generally if the house is in Barnard Marcus it will go cheaper than it would at a local auction (unless of course 'local' for you is London) For example I saw a garage sell at BM for 17K 3 months later it sold at a local auction for 41K, I wanted that garage but OH wouldn't let me buy it - now she knows I was right.


Anyway, buying abroad, consider India, Pakistan, Morocco and Egypt (in that order). I would be interested in Egypt but the police sytem leaves me with chills. Morocco is reasonably stable and interesting, and has plenty of new builds, a traditional old town house would be nice but can you trust the structure to be safe?
Pakistan has plenty of growth going on, but India has to be a safer bet and it is so much more diverse.

I'd go for India - if I had the money and I wasn't tied to the UK.