Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category

Unless you’re a “house person” or an “apartment person” there are many factors that you need to take into account in making the apartment/house decision.

Is this going to be your home or are you buying it for an investment is perhaps the most important question. On the whole, investment properties are generally assumed to require apartments rather than houses in that they’re usually aimed at a transient population who don’t want the hassle of looking after a garden. This isn’t always the case though and in areas where there is rapid price inflation of property which isn’t accompanied by a similar rise in salaries then you could be better looking at houses as families often find themselves priced out of the market in such circumstances. This is good for property investors in that you get a more stable base of rental clients than is typical in most areas.

That paragraph provides the first part of the answer for you too. If your stay is likely to be of a short duration such as for a university course or for a short-term contract then clearly apartments are the way to go. That avoids all the hassle of looking after the surroundings of a house and yet you can still get lovely surroundings in some of the apartment developments.

Have you any children or planning to have them? If they’re fairly young, usually it’s best to be looking at a house in that they’re usually larger in comparable circumstances. Of course, that extra size means more initial expense. For example, in the estate which we bought our property the two bedroom houses are around 15% more expensive than the two bedroom apartments.

Rent or purchase? If your move is temporary then rental is the way to go and that will usually push you towards apartments as there are usually more apartments for rent than houses in most areas.

Purchasing implies a longer term stay but if you are moving into an area distant from where you currently live you can find yourself with a choice between a rental apartment in an ideal area or a house purchase into a less than perfect area. If this applies to you and you need to move relatively quickly the thing to do is to rent the apartment in the ideal area first and make your purchase when a suitable property appears on the market. Despite what people think, you don’t need to move directly from one permanent home to another.

City or country? Whilst you get both houses and apartments in cities, you usually only get houses in the country. Therefore if you hope to live in the country, whether it be miles from anywhere or in a small village, then you will almost certainly have to choose to live in a house.

That’s just a brief overview of some of the main deciders; I’m sure that you can add to that list!

For those interested in France and perhaps thinking of buying a house in France at some point there are really only two property exhibitions that are worth considering which are the French Property Show in September and the Vive la France exhibition (now called The France Show) in January.

Anyone at all serious about property purchase in France should know of both of these or else they’ve been hiding out of reach of any France related publication. I had thought they were both so well known that there wouldn’t be any need to explicit advertising for either of them other than the mentions that both get in the numerous France property magazines.

And yet, they DO advertise, seemingly quite extensively. Why?

Well, my guess is that the punters were a little thin on the ground at the last exhibition in January 2007 as they certainly were very thin on the ground in France: we had no housebuyers staying with us at all during 2006. So, the organisers have hit the panic button this time to avoid any repetition.

Ironically, the housebuyers seem to be reappearing of their own accord so it’s probably going to be one of the most packed France exhibitions seen for some time. Of course, this just goes to show that people treat the Vive la France advertising more as a note of somewhere to go if they’re serious about buying than as something which puts them into a buying frame of mind. For really serious purchases such as for houses, advertising doesn’t change opinions a whole lot.

With the Winter upon us people divide into the cold and the warm holiday camps whenever ideas for Winter holidays come up.

Although the Summer is obviously the peak time for warm holidays, there are loads of warm holiday destinations available all year. For one thing, when it’s Winter in the northern hemisphere, its Summer in the southern hemisphere so you can always go to the Summer no matter what month it is.

But, of course, changing hemispheres is pretty expensive in terms of flights and whatnot which takes that out as a viable option for most people, or at least as a regular holiday option. Still, that leaves you with lots of choice of warm, albeit not hot, holiday destinations that are fairly cheap to get to.

For example, southern Spain is still in Summer temperatures even in December. In fact, it’s a much better time to visit southern Spain than in the peak of Summer as the majority of the tourists have gone home so you’re not fighting to get accommodation and the traffic on the roads is considerably less hectic than it is during July and August. Right now Stansted to Valencia can be done for under £30 return, including taxes.

Further south brings in more exotic options for your such as Morocco or Tunisia which combine Winter warmth with a more exotic culture and they’re both fairly cheap places in which to stay.

For all of these, I find that one of the best ways to skim through the options is via SkyScanner which can pull up all kinds of interesting locations that you wouldn’t normally think of.

I was leafing through the categories and funnily enough though I write a fair bit about both holidays and finance I don’t think I’ve ever written something that covers both!

So, with the Christmas holiday season coming up, how were you planning on financing the holiday? Christmas is perhaps the worst holiday to finance as you can have a “worst-case” scenario in terms of finance with the potential for both Christmas presents and a foreign holiday which makes for quite a big bill for some people.

In an ideal world, you’d have saved up for it all months in advance, but then this isn’t an ideal world, is it? Therefore many people are looking to borrow money to finance it all.

Fortunately, many people are in the same boat and therefore there are lots of offers of credit around at this time of year. As a rule, avoid store credit for the presents as this is often the most expensive form of credit and instead look towards the banks. If you’ve not used up all the 0% card offers, this is the time to get filling in the appropriate application forms which can get you up to 9 months interest free credit on purchases and, if you’re lucky enough, you might be able to finance both the Christmas presents and the holiday with one of these cards.

One thing to avoid though is the head in the sand approach that many people take. That attitude will almost certainly cost you dear and you’ll end up paying way over the odds for your borrowing. Even if you can’t get 0%, at least check what interest you’re paying on your credit cards and use the one with the lowest rate to buy whatever needs bought.

Some of the links that come up on websites are pretty peculiar, don’t you think?

Now, I can understand where they’re coming from when a google ad appears on the blog that’s related to France. After all, I have written a fair amount about France in the past. But hold on: since I’m not writing much about it now, how come google is putting ads on the site that relate to France so often? It shouldn’t be what I wrote about in the past that’s relevant but what’s on the page with the ad right now. Except that often it isn’t.

In a similar vein, the pages being picked up by Reuters are something of a mystery. They’re using some variant of a keyword sieve to select the articles so it’s understandable that my article titled As seen on Reuters is the most “popular”. Similarly those with financial type words in the title have been picked up too, or at least some of them have. Trying to work out what they are looking for will while away many an hour over the Winter I expect.

And then there’s the people who have selected this blog to advertise on. Goodness knows what they are looking for as it’s a complete mystery to me!