How to buy a holiday home abroad
How to buy a holiday home abroad – without getting burned
Jacinta Walmsley, head of Hatchers residential conveyancing, explains the legal process of buying foreign property
You will need to find someone capable of reading the documents in the language of the country where you are buying. At Hatchers, we are able to assist buyers who are purchasing properties abroad and have an in-house expert in the burgeoning property market of Croatia . As a non-EU state, buying is more complex but our fluent Croatian-speaking conveyancing lawyer Stewart Watson understands the legal process there and has helped our clients buy holiday homes on the Adriatic coast.
If you have to sell or remortgage a property in the UK to fund your dream purchase you will be dealing with two separate and possibly conflicting legal systems. In this situation, bear in mind that the average remortgage in the UK takes four to six weeks to complete and the average sale six to eight weeks from the time you accept an offer. If there are complications or you are in a long chain it can take up to three months. Under English law no property sale is legally binding until contracts have been exchanged, but with some foreign legal systems you have to sign a contract and commit to a completion date very quickly. This leads to problems if your UK sale falls through at a late stage. Before you commit to purchasing a property check how much money will have to be provided by you at each stage of the transaction, when this is required and at what point you will be unable to back out of the deal under the law of that country. If the money is needed quickly you may have to consider bridging finance to fund the foreign purchase until the UK transaction is complete.
You also need to make a foreign will in addition to your UK will. Each should deal solely with the assets held in that country as neither is enforceable outside the jurisdiction of that country. Ask your solicitor in the UK to draw up the foreign will and then get it translated by your solicitor abroad, who will also check that it is lawful there.
Villa fever. No, not an urge to invest in a small property just outside Birmingham but a burning desire to own your own place in the sun. As the cold, grey weather sets in, increasingly, many Brits are turning their dreams into reality. Surveys suggest that upwards of five million of us are thinking of buying a home overseas for holiday, investment or retirement purposes. However, it means dealing with an unfamiliar legal system and this can cause much anxiety.
The legal work on the purchase of your foreign property must be undertaken by a specialist in that country’s legal system so is usually handled by a local lawyer. You should ensure this person is accredited and English-speaking so they can explain the process to you. There have been recent horror stories in the newspapers where British buyers have been ‘ripped off’ by their foreign solicitors as a consequence of giving them sweeping powers of attorney to make financial decisions on their behalf. We advise that you only give power of attorney specifically related to the job in hand and that before signing anything you get all documents checked over by a solicitor in the UK
