Buying Property Abroad - Where to Start

humphrd

I have to agree with stays & cns06 - research where you are intending to buy and I'd actually not recommending taking anything out of your UK home.

We bought in France in 2007 with a french mortgage and taking the deposit from our UK house - fast forward 7 years and we have been trying to sell for the last 5 years. Our UK mortgage company are losing patience as we aren't reducing the UK debt and we could now be forced to sell here.

Certainly in France there are a lot of people desperate to come home but can't sell or giving up on their dreams and coming away with nothing. There are also people who have made it work for them but do tread carefully.

We also have friends in other areas of Europe in the same position - with plenty of money and the flexibility to travel it can absolutely work but I would only recommend doing your calculations on worse case scenario in terms of your income, exchange rate etc.

If you intend to buy in France feel free to PM me - more than happy to share our experience & any information that would be helpful to you.

Angie_B

humphrd wrote: »

We bought in France in 2007 with a french mortgage and taking the deposit from our UK house - fast forward 7 years and we have been trying to sell for the last 5 years. Our UK mortgage company are losing patience as we aren't reducing the UK debt and we could now be forced to sell here.

Can I ask how you were planning on reducing the UK debt? I assume you re-mortgaged your UK property to put up the deposit for the French home? Were you planning on renting the French property to pay both the French and British mortgage?

humphrd

Angie B - originally it was to be a holiday home & we'd rent it out to pay the French mortgage, plus we were both in long term secure jobs which would pay for both properties and reduce both debts until we weren't & both made redundant in 2008. We then rented the UK property for a while whilst we renovated the French property rather than paying someone else to to do it & lived out there with a view to sell one or other once we'd worked out where we wanted to live full time.

We have an offset mortgage which gave us the flexibility & we do have enough equity in both properties to entirely pay off the French mortgage or to reduce the UK mortgage .