We have had our Normandy house for 2.5 years and we love it. To help cover costs and to help maintain the house we have been renting it out.
For those of you who have seen my other contributions on this forum, we have not really enjoyed renting out our holiday home because of all the problems.
In addition, we have found that we have only been able to cover the utility charges and taxes with our letting income, but not enough to cover minor improvements (well more like maintenance) that we (will) need to undertake.
Where possible, to save money we have done basic DIY ourselves and as a consequence spend a lot of our holiday time working. Not the plan - as, like many people, our lives are very stressed on a day to day basis in the UK and we need our holidays.
Anyway, (apologies for the long post) hubby has recently lost his job, so we thought that it may be better to sell the house and buy an apartment near the sea or on a complex with a pool. This way we figure, we would have less maintenance work to do. We realise that there would be communal charges.
Has anyone else done this? If so how does it compare with owning a house? Or did you go straight for an apartment? How do you find it owning an apartment?
Comparing house/apartment ownership?
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musicmonkey
- Posts: 86
- Joined: Fri Oct 15, 2004 12:37 pm
- Location: Manche
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Can't give advice re an apartment v house cost wise...but can on the coast.
Sand, more sand and even more sand.....gets everywhere, blocks the showers, in the furniture and I even find it in the washing machine here at home after doing the towels and the mats I put down in the bedrooms (I wash them every week).
Then if a kind captain decides to let oil out of his tanks at sea and it comes ashore you will get plenty of that inside as well! Not the tenants fault but it does manage to walk in , get on towels etc - it's always that lovely thick tar as well! (only happened twice/3 times in as many years)
Sun tan oil is also brought into the house.
Changing your house to an apartment for letting...you still have the same problem...strangers in your place - therefore work, maybe not as much but your cleaners will need to be spot on for sand!
Sorry to hear about the redundancy/job loss.
Sand, more sand and even more sand.....gets everywhere, blocks the showers, in the furniture and I even find it in the washing machine here at home after doing the towels and the mats I put down in the bedrooms (I wash them every week).
Then if a kind captain decides to let oil out of his tanks at sea and it comes ashore you will get plenty of that inside as well! Not the tenants fault but it does manage to walk in , get on towels etc - it's always that lovely thick tar as well! (only happened twice/3 times in as many years)
Sun tan oil is also brought into the house.
Changing your house to an apartment for letting...you still have the same problem...strangers in your place - therefore work, maybe not as much but your cleaners will need to be spot on for sand!
Sorry to hear about the redundancy/job loss.
it's all a learning curve!