Portugal is a little way behind Spain when in comes to holiday home rental, one of the main reason is the fairly complex letting laws applicable in the country. Many existing owners are confused by the requirements and many new holiday home investors are being put off from buying in Portugal because of the laws.
Alas at the present moment, these laws are showing no signs of being changing and thus a number of companies experienced in these matters are starting to offer a service whereby property owners can outsource the compliance issues to a third party. One such agency is Caspo Business based in Praia do Carvoeiro. They will prepare and obtain a licence application for you for on average 1100 Euros per property.
The service is not cheap, but then it may save you a lot of worry. There are some wonderful property opportunities in Portugal at the moment and hopefully services such as this will encourage people to buy with confidence.
Tax change benefit for Holiday Homeowners
Good news for holiday homeowners, who are soon to benefit financially from new regulations which will see the taxman scrap UK tax on property that has been purchased through a company. Holiday homeowners who buy overseas property through a company in order to avoid local inheritance law will from 2008 no longer have to pay an annual UK tax
Malta Property Prices
Malta has a wonderful British feel about it and recently Holiday home purchases have been on the increase. Malta has been popular with Britons and South Africans for quite some time, many consider it to be Britain with lots of sun. Especially popular with the Brits are the older style houses which can be perfect for renovation and repair. Property prices are increasing on the island and in 2006 prices were up 16%. And demand is running high.
In response to this, the Maltese government is considering making more land available to builders and developers to construct new property as many local people are unhappy at the disappearance of cheap housing. Holiday home ownership looks set to continue growing at a pace, it is thought that many budget airlines are intending to increase flights to Malta shortly, recent figures suggest that up to 18 % extra flights will be available this year.
Protection Insurance
News just released from Consumer Group Which suggests that many people are people tricked in to buying credit insurance online. This type of insurance also known as Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) can work out to be very expensive. Sometimes this cover is automatically added by telephone sales staff and this type of activity gives insurance a bad name. The policy covers the person buying the loan against injury or ill health.
It is estimated that over half of companies selling loans include this type of insurance during the sales process. If you are taking out a loan be sure before you commit to the application to check whether loan protection insurance is included. You may to interested in this type of cover but you have a right to know how much it costs.
All Risks Insurance
Its that time of year when we are spending more time out of doors and this is a good time to check that your home insurance policy affords you the correct protection. If you have a standard Home Contents insurance policy, in all probability, you will have very restricted cover for items that are removed from the home on a temporary basis. If you want to have wider cover to protect you against accidental damage or loss away from the home, you will need to extend your policy to cover All Risks.
Be careful not to interpret the term too literary as there are still quite a few exclusions with this type of cover but the main perils such as Theft & Breakage will be covered.
Different insurers have different attitudes to all risk cover, so will ask you to split your valuables in to a number of sections such as Jewellery, Camera Equipment, Sports Equipment. All Risks policies can either be arranged on an unspecified basis. This will give you first loss cover, you select a sum insured and that is the maximum amount that you can claim at any one time. This unspecified all risk cover usually comes with a single article limit restriction. If you select a sum insured of say £5000, you may find that any one article can not be worth more than £1000.00. On a specified basis, you actually tell the insurance company the items you wish to insure and the values. They will then produce a schedule of your cover, specified all risks is usually slightly cheaper as the insurance company know exactly what they are insuring.
If you valuables are in excess of a certain amount, you may be requested to supply valuations and even have additional security fitted to your home such as an alarm or a safe. As mentioned above, this type of additional home cover does come with certain restrictions, In particular if f you have valuable sports equipment, check to see if it covers you in play, many policies exclude this type of cover.
