Would you buy?

Really in two minds what to do??

As a working couple in our late 40's who visit Albufeira 3 to 5 times a year, sometimes for a week sometimes for a weekend who plan to spend a LOT more time there when we eventually stop working, would YOU buy a property now or just use hotels and private rents?

If we did buy we would not want to rent out.

Just your ideas for advice please.

Thank you.

Based on our own experience it has to be buy.
Bought our 1 bed apartment 14 years ago & have never regretted it for a minute.
We've never let it out & only used it for weekends & holidays until we retired 6 years ago.
Now we spend up to 5 months a year here.
Running costs, if you don't use it much, are not expensive - about £1.5k a year in our case.
So if you only spend your holidays here then you're no worse off than going on a couple of package holidays.
Obviously the longer you come over for then the running costs go up but if you stay for long periods the extra cost here is more than covered by what you save from not being at home.

Agree with all the above, buy.
We did and have not regretted it for a second, it's our second home, we don't rent either, just get there as often as we can and with retirement looking imminent ( thank gawd) we're looking forward to spending more time there.

Thank you for your advice, always good to hear from people who actually have experience 👍

Bought in 2011, best thing we ever did. Instead of shelling out €1,000 two or three times a year for a week in a villa. We go over every month from March to October for anything from 3 days to 2 weeks. Still have to work and have last lad in secondary school so can't stretch to longer breaks at the moment, looking forward to staying longer over the next few years. Made friends in Albufeira, its our second home. Go on, bite the bullet.

Definitely buy - we are very glad we did.
Make sure you get independent legal advisor though rather than one proposed by agent. If you take the same care as you would when buying in UK the you will be pleased .
Good luck
Richard

A note on renting out.
As I said earlier we don't do it, although while we were working we did let friends, friends of friends and work colleagues use it for a very modest fee - enough to cover electricity, gas & water used.
Rule of thumb - if you think you know someone and think you can trust them while they're over here then you probably don't know them that well & you probably can't trust them.
Despite explicit requests & instructions, that were all part of the extremely cheap deal, the apartment was mostly left like a tip with things broken, rotten stuff in the fridge and marks on walls etc etc
All of which took us a couple of days to sort out everytime we came back.
If you're going to buy then keep it for your own use only.
Otherwise you will be forever worrying as to what's going on & who has done what to your second home.
Unless the potential income is needed to help fund a purchase then renting it out is just not worth all the hassle.
You can leave all your personal stuff here, leave your clothes, you don't have worry about packing or putting your stuff away before you go home or unpacking when you arrive.
More importantly when you arrive at the property you'll find it exactly how you left it and and exactly how you like it.
That way you start your holiday immediately you walk through the door & not two days after you've arrived.

Totally agree with Dicey, we rented out our place for the first year we had it to people we knew, again for a very small fee. Our problem was, it was so popular we couldn't get into it ourselves when we wanted to, we had to book ourselves in, totally defeating the purpose of being able to pop over whenever. And I do love travelling with nothing more than a handbag to carry! Maybe not a balanced view S1gh but most people on this forum love Albufeira.