Living abroad tips and hints for money savers

droopsnout

LOL! Doesn't say much for us, then, does it?

Carmen

Hi Droopsnout, I have heard it is lovely in SW France, beautiful countryside people very friendly, is that the case, Spain fairly easy to access,have you been there a long ??
Carmen x

droopsnout

You have heard right, Carmen!!

Access to Spain is somewhat impeded by the Pyrenees (!), but easiest at the eastern and western extremities. From where we live, Andorra is about three hours' drive, too, though we feel no particular desire to make repeated visits there. Twice has been enough!

SW France is a pretty big area,with really diverse countryside, from the Basque coast, through the pine forest of the Landes, through the armagnac country, the heart of Gascony in the Lomagne hillsides, the Cathar country of the Aude, the Toulouse plain, right down to the beauty of the Med coast at, say, Collioure. (And I've missed out several areas ...)

Hard to generalise, therefore.

We've been here 4½ years.

hartcjhart

Hi all, just thought I would post a link to a very usefull information site covering the Costa Almeria and other parts of Andalucia,it is free to join and you dont get spammed.
To the Mods on this site.
If I have done wrong giving this link I am a moderator on the site.

https://www.costaalmeria.com

Craig(hartcjhart)

seven-day-weekend

hartcjhart wrote: »

Hi all, just thought I would post a link to a very usefull information site covering the Costa Almeria and other parts of Andalucia,it is free to join and you dont get spammed.
To the Mods on this site.
If I have done wrong giving this link I am a moderator on the site.

https://www.costaalmeria.com

Craig(hartcjhart)

Hello Craig, welcome to the forum.

Had a quick look at your site, but you don't appear to mention the thousands of hectares covered by plastic greenhouses?

Or have I missed it?

cazzyb_3

Hi

Would like to say that this is indeed an interesting thread.

I have decided to chip in at this point in reply to the below post.

Rachie_B wrote: »

An interesting thread :T

I hope you don't mind me joining?

I'm neither 50+ or Living Abroad

We are thinking of purchasing a mobile home static caravan ,either in the Costa del Sol area have seen some for sale @ Camping Cabopino http://www.campingcabopino.com/ING_home.asp ( and we love that area as a base for exploring ) or possibly France !

We enjoy family Keycamp type holidays so think this is ideal for us,and so much more affordable than buying an apartment etc !

Maybe in a years to come but we are both only 28 and have 2 children so plenty of time for that !

We would be buying in cash ,outright,just be using if for personal use,also family & friends etc ,so not relying on any rental potential etc.

Any hints,tips,advice good or bad! ,website links etc anyone can offer would be most appreciated.

TIA

We very recently considered this idea of a static caravan ( we can't afford a bricks and mortar property ) mainly for a rental income to be honest, but also with a view to using it ourselves. However after doing our homework we quite quickly discovered some major disadvantages.

There is an awful lot involved and a lot of things to consider but we found the main points to be:

These things are certainly NOT an investment because like cars, they depreciate VERY quickly in value. I have heard it can be as much as 40% within the first year.

A lot of sites have a rule that "to maintain high standards" you can have your van for a maximum of 10 years before you have to move or replace it. Try moving it to another site, we found out that would be impossible especially for a van 10 years old. So basically you would have to scrap it. Some sites do however state that you can have your van for as long as you like but it must be maintained to a high standard. To us that seemed a bit "hairy fairy". It is at their discression as to whether or not your van can stay once it started to get a bit old looking. The upshot of it is that you own the van but not the land it is sited on so at the end of the day you could be kicked off the site if you van is deemed to be not up to scratch. There do not seem to be any guarantees of how long you can keep the van on site especially if you buy a pre-owned one.

The running costs of owning the van, i.e. site fees or ground rent, gas, water, electricity, insurance etc varies from site to site but comes to about £3000 per year ( or about £55 per week ) on average. So you would have to shell that out each year BEFORE buying any flights/ferries. Also bear in mind that site fees rise every year so as each year passes it will cost more.

Factor in the cost of the actual van itself, they start from about £10,000 for a pre-owned one. So with an average life-span of 10 years, that works out £1000 per year. Add on the running costs of, at present, approx £3000 a year you are looking at a cost of approx £4000 per year BEFORE buying any flights and ferries.
We decided that it works out at a ridiculous cost, especially as the van will not last forever, it would only be for about 10 years maximum, plus it meant that we would have to holiday in the same place all the time which does not appeal at all to be honest.

From a rental point of view we have found out that you can usually cover the running costs for the year with the rental income but you are very hard pushed to make any actual profit. Of course though the catch is that people will want to rent you van in peak season, leaving you with the off peak weeks which I think judging from you post would be no good to you at all.

Other people may have a different story to tell but this is what we discovered when researching the idea. As you have probably guessed we have decided against it for now, unless we can find out something more positve about ownership. Hope this helps.

seven-day-weekend

Agree with above post^^

Rachie_B

thanks for your detailed post cazzy

missile

EU have told Spain to stop issuing residencia as of 28th March and eliminate extra tax on property sales by for non-residents :T

seven-day-weekend

I knew about the extra tax but not the residencia. We already have ours.