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The problem with most overseas home buyers is that they'll take estate agents at their word without bothering to do any kind of research of their own, and subsequently end up buying the wrong piece of real estate for their needs. This is especially true where homes bought for the specific purpose of holiday lettings are concerned.
Let's face it a moment; someone booking a two week family holiday in the sun wants rent a property with everything close to hand. They want to open their front door, and step onto a beach; preferably a beach lined with plenty of restaurants, bars, and other entertainments. What they do not want is to be stuck in a farming village in the middle of nowhere.
In the latter stages of the Cyprus Property Boom, a great many British buyers developed a strange fixation with "Investment Properties in Sotira, a charming little village just five minutes from the beach, close to Larnaca airport, and only a short distance from the resorts of Ayia Napa, Paralimni, and Protaras". As a result, Sotira experienced a rush of British investors taking advantage of the huge opportunities presented by the little village.
These days, Sotira is filled with for-sale signs, and a lot of British home owners wondering what provoked them into buying investment real estate there in the first place.
You see? Sotira isn't five minutes from the beach, it's three and a half miles from cliffs. Larnaca airport isn't close by, it's an hour away. And the village may only be a short distance from the aforementioned resorts, but you're traveling along little country roads, so it takes over ten minutes just to get to Paralimni. In short, it's not what you might call an ideal holiday rental location. And yet, a large number of buy-to-let buyers thought they could make huge returns through holiday lettings in Sotira, just because developers and estate agents told them so.
So what's the answer? Get some good advice, and then spend a few hours doing the necessary research yourself. Target popular resorts, stay reasonably close to known tourist beaches, and make sure the properties you're looking at have plenty of amenities and entertainments nearby. And lastly, whatever you do, don't be afraid to pay a little more for something that's perfect, instead of a little less for something that's just OK.
A perfect case in point is one holiday home being administered by our rental arm, a fully-featured, sumptuous 4 bedroom villa with private pool, just a stone's throw from Nissi Beach in Ayia Napa. The selling price on this amazing home is €500,000, which may sound like a lot until you consider the fact that its peak-season rental price stands at €1,600 per week, while during the off-season it's renting for €1,000 per week. What's more, it's almost constantly booked between the middle of April and the end of September, with quite a few bookings during the rest of the year too.
If you're really serious about investing in buy-to-let, mortgages, even at today's low interest rates, will simply eat up too much of your profits. So this approach is really only feasible if you're in a position to purchase the home in question outright. |
