Overseas property owners triple
Tuesday, 21 Nov 2006 12:02
Ownership of overseas property is growing fast
The number of Brits with an overseas property as a second home has tripled in the last ten years, new research reveals.
Most recent figures show 300,000 UK households own an overseas property as a second home, almost three times the 102,000 figure for 1995.
The report also calculates that by 2025 as many as 1.3 million Brits may be living overseas - around two per cent of the population - with the typical resident expected to be either a pensioner, an affluent investor or holiday-home owner over 45-years-old.
"Thousands of UK nationals have been attracted by the lure of a warm climate, a cheap cost of living and easy access to a second home overseas. However it is all too easy to be seduced into the attractions of overseas property ownership and to ignore the perils," said Mike Warburton, senior tax partner at Grant Thornton, who commissioned the research.
"We anticipate that the trend of a gently rising number of people deciding to leave the UK permanently and live abroad, upon retirement, will continue," added Maurice Fitzpatrick, senior tax manager at Grant Thornton.
"Any continued increase in overseas second home ownership is heavily dependent on the strength of the UK property market and the wealth it generates. It is this liquidity which influences people in taking the necessary steps to invest abroad. By 2025 this could mean that 1.5 million to two million households in the UK will own a property overseas, an amount which would equate to one-tenth of UK property owners."