The numbers
The holding cost nobody budgets
A house costs something every year whether you are in it or not. The lines that make up the bill, where they are large, and the two that are invisible until the first year's end.
Your result
The Seasonal Resident
Wants the same house every August and every February, and wants it to pay for itself the rest of the year.
You buy a season. Ten weeks on the Costa Smeralda, the winter in Kitzbühel, the summer on Sylt: a house you use hard for part of the year and that must not be a burden for the rest of it. You care about the letting record, the management company and the exact number of weeks.
What works for you
You are clear-eyed about what a house is for, which most buyers are not. A seasonal resident who has run the own-or-rent arithmetic and bought anyway will keep the house for twenty years, and the letting income buys the patience.
What to watch
The licence, the season and the management. A villa that cannot be let is a different asset from one that can; a season that is ten weeks long is not sixteen; a manager who takes a third is not the same as one who takes a fifth. Read the hotspot pages on licensing before you fall for a terrace.
Structure
Usually private ownership, with a letting company where the volume justifies it. In Spain the licence must be in the owner's name; in Austria and Tyrol the residence declaration is the first question, not the last.
The hotspots that fit
Ibiza
Es Cubells, Vista Alegre, the north and the walls of Dalt Vila.
Costa Smeralda
Porto Cervo, Romazzino, Cala di Volpe and Porto Rotondo.
Kitzbühel
The town, Reith, Aurach, Going and the Bichlalm side.
Sylt
Kampen, Keitum, Wenningstedt, Westerland and List.
Run the numbers
Own or Rent
For the weeks you will actually be there: whether owning beats renting the same house.
Read next
The numbers
The numbers
Reading a price per square metre
The most quoted number in property and the least useful at the top of it. What it measures, what it hides, and how the Ranesta Index uses it anyway.
The places
The hotspot cycle
Prime markets do not move together. Dubai has fallen forty per cent twice; the Gold Coast of Zürich has not fallen in living memory. How the cycle works at the top, and how to buy through it.
The Private Letter
One letter a month.
One letter a month: what moved in the hotspots, one anonymised sale explained, one number worth knowing. No advertising, no tracking, one click to leave.