Sustaining & Maintaining A Vacation Home Abroad

When I have traveled, I love staying in hotels well sort of, but I always miss the homey feeling. I start to miss home even though I am in this beautiful setting that I am supposed to be enjoying. I mean I know that you understand the feeling of wanting to carry your home to your vacation. And that has led to me renting homes while traveling because I am on a budget. But if my wallet were deeper I would definitely invest in a timeshare or vacation home situation, especially in my retirement years. That would be my dream situation actually and quite popular with baby boomers. The trend has been in recent years, that a lot of American retirees have moved to South America. Since I am not near retiring at the moment I can dream of my perfect retirement situation.
Sustaining and maintaining a vacation home abroad can sometimes be easier said than done. While the journey of finding a place for your tastes and outfitting it to your standard could be a very enjoyable experience, maintaining this property will take a little work and effort. Thankfully, this is more than achievable, and if done correctly can help you keep a place to return to year after year after year. You never know, one day you might retire with this as your main home, living in a highly desirable vacation spot throughout your golden years.
But maintaining the property throughout your ownership should be the first thing on your mind. Achieving this will take many different steps. Some will be preventative, some will be regular, and some will mean keeping a watchful eye over the services you utilize to help you.
If considering purchasing a vacation home abroad, keep the following considerations in mind:

A Solid Location

Remember that a vacation home is just that, a place where you will likely retire to a number of times per year. This means that the home could be unattended for periods of a time. For that reason, it can be important to purchase one in a good area with a thriving local community. Look online for great deals in beautiful areas, such as those offered via Rumah. https://www.rumah.com/rumah-dijual/di-area-jakarta-barat-idjk01/dibawah-700juta-rupiah/2
It might be worth seeing local crime statistics and talking to your local neighbors to make sure they understand the property is owned. These steps can help you keep aware of any preventative measures or suspicious circumstances surrounding your property.

Security

Staying aware of security issues is one thing, resolving them or preparing for them is quite another. You should consider your home security always, but especially in a home, you do not occupy often. It might be that automatically scheduled internal lighting systems are not something you might consider feasible for long-term absence from a property, as this can also cause a fire hazard over the months if something goes wrong. Instead, you might use simple efforts such as placing a ‘beware of the dog’ sign, installing floodlights that activate and illuminate your driveway if detecting motion, as well as a number of false CCTV cameras around the property.
Solid fencing and locks on all the windows and doors can also help, even if the locks may seem overkill. Just keep in mind that in some vacation areas, such as in Europe, old architecture can sometimes mean you might need to replace window arches or install more stringent systems to prevent any form of a break-in. Communicating with your neighbors and asking them to inform you and the police of any issues that occur can be a good thing to put in place, but you’ll also need to form local connections for this to be worthwhile.

Live-In Guests

If you’re not spending time at your vacation property for most of the year, it can be wise to make some money from the whole affair at least. Consider using a service such as Airbnb to rent your property through curated clients you might accept. You can choose many different forms of filter for accepting people, such as only allowing small families with parents over 30, or retired couples looking for a place to relax in the summer weeks you cannot attend yourself.
However, it might also be that you find no problem allowing groups of younger people to party there, as long as they put forward a strong deposit and clean diligently afterward. Financial costs can occur if you’re not careful as it’s no secret what young people can be like, but if you stipulate any issues in the contract you should be covered for this to a degree. Just keep in mind the necessity to ensure your property correctly against any difficulty here, and see what forms of contract might either adhere to or be lenient with those terms.
It might be that you hope to skip this entire process, and instead only rent to those who are known to you, such as relatives, friends or family. This might be for a discounted rate, or that you simply allow trusted close ones to use the property to help it seem lived in, and for them to maintain it during their visit. Just be sure you’re careful about who you grant keys to, as if you’re not there to maintain the incomings and outgoings of guests, you might find yourself victimized by someone who found it easy to cut a key to the property.

Services

To prevent a home from seeming abandoned, thus both increasing your security and heightening your potential rental value (as well as making the property look nice for your fabled visits,) consider using the correct services to help you maintain the property effectively. This might mean hiring a local gardening service to maintain the land and garden each week, especially improving the curb appearance of the property. You might rent the services of a trusted cleaning service, or even a security service to keep watch over the property if you have that depth of funding to spare.
Services can help maintain the property for you while you’re away, which can prove incredibly valuable when trying to keep hold of the quality of the property.

Visit Often

Of course, purchasing a vacation home isn’t simply for once a year visits. Making an investment in this form of property means you should make the most of it. You might allow your son or daughter to use this home as a means for their first independent vacation. You might use it as a platform to learn more about the culture, make friends in another country or even reside there and face the slow march to citizenship in a new country. The more familiar with a place you become, the better memories you can craft there, and the more the place become a part of your identity. With these tips, sustaining and maintaining a vacation home abroad will help the property sustain and maintain you in kind. Do you have a dream of owning a home in another country? Where would you buy and why?

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Until our next rendezvous…

XOXO

Trudy

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