So you’re looking to make some serious cash from investing in property? Sounds like a good plan to us! While there is certainly good money to be made from buying property in emerging tourist hot spots, we think that there is even better money to be made from buying in capital cities. Why? Because … There’s always high demand for quality property in capital cities, not just from expats but from wealthy locals. Capital cities are where the jobs are. Every emerging city is seeing increasing movement from the countryside or provincial cities into the capitals. Even in cities that are now very popular with foreign buyers like Prague and Riga, locals still account for 80% of purchases, even for the most expensive of apartments.
In the majority of cases, tourist hot-spots aren’t ‘hot’ all the year round, meaning that it can be quite often difficult to attract rental income in the off-season. In capital cities, most of the rentals will be long-term, meaning that there is no off-season, making your rental income more predictable and secure.
Long-term tenants means less effort is needed to market the property, so it’s going to take up less time and effort for you (important if you’re planning on building up a substantial property portfolio). Long-term tenants also tend to take better care of the property if it’s their main residency.
Although there are a lot of new developments in several of the capital cities, it will be a long time before new developments become a substantial part of a city’s housing stock. If some of the coastal resorts go the same way as the Spanish Costas, supply of new developments could quickly outstrip demand, which is likely to be less of an issue in capital cities.
The two markets aren’t mutually exclusive, however. Cities like Prague and Budapest have been major tourist destinations ever since the fall of Communism. The growth of the low cost airlines is making some of the lesser known Eastern European capitals like Riga and Bratislava increasingly popular tourist destinations as well.
Such cities can offer the best of both worlds, allowing you the possibility to rent your property out either to tourists on a short-term basis, or to residents (local or expat) on a long-term basis. On the following page we provide you with all of the essential data you will need in order to compare all of the emerging markets in Eastern Europe side-by-side. At this point, it might be useful to explain which of the markets we cover on this site. In order to be covered on Propertastic!, countries need to achieve the following criteria: They must be relatively new markets which have high growth potential. There is already plenty of information available on mature markets such as Spain, France, Greece and Cyprus, so no need to go through it again here.
They must be within short-haul flying distance of Western Europe. While there are interesting property markets further away, you’re probably going to need to make several trips to the country or countries that are of interest to you in order to complete the property buying process from start to finish, and this is going to get rather expensive and tiresome if you need to make long-haul flights each time.
Before you click on the link to continue, we would advise you to pop the kettle on and make yourself a cuppa. We’re going to be doing some serious number crunching on the next page.
OK, so are you nice and relaxed? Take some nice long deep breaths and continue … Show Me The Stats! >>> |
