Getting A Holiday Home For Less With The French Leaseback Scheme
Anna Stenning is a home maker who recently purchased a holiday home in the South of France. Find out more about French leaseback at http://www.premierfrenchleaseback.com/
Like many other people, I’ve often dreamed of owning a holiday home in another country; Bulgaria, the South of France, somewhere warm with a nice beach nearby where I could really just relax and get away from it all with my family every now and then. I finally paid off my mortgage and decided that now was the time to buy, but the credit crunch made me wary about taking out another mortgage, until a friend told me about the French leaseback scheme.
Initially I was concerned that it was similar to a timeshare scheme which can sometimes be a scam, but after discussing it further with my friend and doing a bit of my own research, it turns out that this couldn’t be further from the truth. In a nutshell, the French leaseback scheme is an initiative set up by the government to encourage tourism to the area in which a holiday venue is built and is then bought from the developer by the person looking to invest in their holiday home (myself in this case).
The developer will then lease it back from the person they sell it to, meaning that they still have access to it and are responsible for its upkeep, but do not own it anymore. As further encouragement, the government will give a 19.6% VAT tax break on all French leaseback properties providing that the property stays in the program for a minimum of nine years, but should stay in the scheme for 20 to fully recoup the VAT.
The only downside I could see to my leasing back a property was the fact that I wouldn’t be able to use the property for more than six months out of the year. Although that’s not a problem at the moment with work and family, I wouldn’t have minded the option of retiring to my holiday home when my time comes up, but that’s a long way away at the moment. I could use it quite happily for a holiday or two per year, which is quite enough for a holiday with a couple of young children and was definitely making a great saving compared to how it would be working if I were involved in a timeshare scheme or outright buying the property – the lease was paying the mortgage.
Having discussed it with a financial advisor and my family, we visited a few properties in the area we were looking to holiday in and decided to go for a house in the French leaseback scheme. Having a holiday home in the area is ideal as the children don’t need to take long settling in when we go away and we can go to a comfortable, familiar venue every time we go away.
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