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The story of the British love affair with foreign property investment contains enough romance and scandal to make the holiday bestseller lists – but it could have a very nasty ending for some.
Rocketing house prices in the UK, coupled with the rising availability of cheap debt and budget airline flights, fuelled a foreign property boom for British buyers across the world, with nearly half a million securing their very own place in the sun.
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Just as tens of thousands piled into the domestic buy-to-let market, the so-called fly-to-let market was also, in many cases, an ill-conceived punt on house prices maintaining unsustainable rises. Lured by heady promises of capital appreciation and rental yields, many let the sun go to their heads, committing to deals that have gone so spectacularly wrong that they may ultimately result in investors losing their UK residences as well.
The sprawling nature of the holiday homes market, which has spread from the heartlands of France and Spain to ever-more exotic locations including Thailand, Brazil and the Caribbean, makes it difficult to analyse. But by putting together first-hand reports from around the world, Investors Chronicle can report that British buyers are at the heart of a worldwide credit-fuelled property excess that could take up to a decade to unravel.
Read part two of this feature to find out the risks of buying overseas property. In part three, we name the markets which have burnt investors the most and in part four, Claer Barrett finds out whether there are still bargains to be had overseas.
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