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Even twenty years ago, few Brits would have aspired to own a home outside of the UK, but increased affluence, cheap flights, and dissatisfaction with Britain’s grey climate and high crime rates are just some of the reasons people give for wanting to buy outside of the UK. According to a recent survey by the Royal Bank of Scotland, owning a property abroad is now the main item on the wish list for British people, while Saga magazine found that 1.38 million of us had already achieved this ambition.
The space between dreaming of foreign climes and successfully buying property abroad is clearly wide, and Buying a Property Abroad attempts to plug the gap, giving advice on property purchase in countries across the world, from Andorra to the USA.
With ‘property profiles’ on 35 countries, appendices on 14 other countries, as well as sections on financing and making the purchase, and letting and selling the property, Buying a Property Abroad attempts to cover the ground of a hundred such guides. The result is that there is only room for four or five pages on most of the countries featured here; even the USA is given only nine sides.
This approach does not work well. Even for a reader who just wanted to get the hell out of the UK, Buying a Property Abroad does not give enough information to choose meaningfully between the options. There is no room for proper information on regional variations, no detail on recent economic developments. Ben West's guide makes some attempt to point the reader towards further information sources for the different countries, but in the text itself, vagaries preside, which could be unhelpful and even misleading.
Take Germany as an example. Opening his three page profile on buying there, the author mentions that few British people relocate to Germany - partly, he claims, because of historical tensions, and partly because the German people are “not the most open on the continent.”
However, he then goes on to say that buying in Germany can be a good investment and that “property in the booming major cities, popular resort areas and property suitable for refurbishment are the best bet” (where, one wonders, would this not be the case?). One of the cities that he mentions as being vibrant and expensive is the German capital Berlin – intimating that this is a good place to buy. He declines to mention that, although it is a wonderful city for culture, Berlin is currently in financial dire straits, and has had a declining population for years; precisely the stuff that you need to know.
The devil’s in the detail when it comes to property, and most people buying in the UK would spend considerable time finding out about the area, the road and even the neighbours when thinking of investing in a particular house. What’s true for Britain is true for other countries too; hard work, research, experience and attention to minutiae are likely to pay off. Unfortunately, Buying a Property Abroad does not give enough detail to be really useful -it’s better to stick to the more in-depth Cadogan Guides which profile individual countries.
Ben West,Cadogan Guides, ISBN1-86011-124-6
