Mon, Apr 01, 2002 page19

• Germans looking to buy a paradise away from home

  The desire for warmer climates and dreams of the perfect vacation spot often lure buyers to purchase holiday properties that eventually turn out to be poor investments and headaches as well

  • DPA
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  A glass of red wine and a good book on the veranda, and in the distance, a glorious scene of a sunset on the ocean.

  Such is the stuff that Germans' dreams of vacation are made of and which moves them to purchase their own holiday homes in warmer climes. According to a study the country's savings banks, more than 600,000 Germans have pursued this vision and bought a home abroad.

  The properties range from a simple flat for a few tens of thousands of euros in Hungary all the way to a luxury villa costing millions and located on the French Riviera next to the homes of the rich and famous.

  Despite the recent economic downturn, Germans' interest in owning a foreign holiday home has remained unbroken in a boom which started at the end of the 1990s.

  By far the leading site, accounting for about half of all foreign real estate holdings is Spain, followed by Italy and France.

  Regional preferences

  But there are also regional attachments. For example, people in Germany's northwestern state of North Rhine-Westfalia will buy a fishing cottage on the North Sea coast of neighboring Holland or those in the southern state of Bavaria go for Alpine mountain huts in Austria or Switzerland.

  "What counts above all is whether it's reachable," notes Karl- Heinz Beike, the foreign property expert at the largest German real estate company Immobilien GmbH, a holding of the West German state savings bank LBS West in Muenster.

  It is for this reason that the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, which can be reached in two hours' flying time from virtually every German airport, is one of the most popular building sites.

  Despite a stop to new building and rising resentment by the locals against the flood of Germans, Beike says about Mallorca: "In any event there is enough room for the next 20 years."

  Beike is at his busiest in the cold months of the year, when Germans hungry for sunshine and warm weather dream of fincas and villas in southern countries.

  Shattered dreams

  But he cautions people against being too quick and, while in a holidaying mood, making a decision which is not deeply thought out or the costs carefully considered. Too often, the dream will quickly be shattered and people will be in for a tough dose of reality.

  "About five per cent of all offers made for foreign real estate are serious ones," says Werner Steuber, a lawyer and chairman of the German and Swiss Protective Society for Foreign Property Ownership.

  "The remaining 95 per cent are, at the very least, dubious," he adds. "If you delve more deeply into many offers, then mostly all you come up with is hot air -- and often with a bad stench as well."

  Steuber represents buyers who felt cheated by real estate agents or property developers, and he cites a long list of possible ways that people can be deceived and overcharged at contract-signing time.

  Above all, he warns people against having the wrong ideas about how well the value of the property will hold up in southern climes.

  "It is never a financial investment," Steuber says. "Those who don't have enough money already in the bank to cover the cost of their dream house should keep their hands off. It is only going to cost them money and give no return."

  Only very few people ever recover their money when they sell their foreign property again. Instead of the hoped-for profits from rentals and appreciation of properties in supposedly top locations, most owners only reap a lot of headaches, he says.

  Rude Awakening

  Citing a few examples, people who thought they were buying a property with a clear view of a bay get a rude awakening when one day they suddenly see construction cranes and equipment for a new building. Or the nice Spanish man turns out not to be the owner, as he claimed, of the house people have just bought.

  What follows is then a marathon process of legal wrangling under the foreign rules.

  Despite the dangers, it is in particular older-generation Germans who are drawn to spend more time than just a holiday in a place where the weather is warmer and the red wine better. Beike estimates that there are about 40,000 serious would-be buyers each year.

  Out of reach for most people

  In the Swiss region of Tessin, where wealthy German senior citizens get together in restrictive clubs, property prices are far out of reach of people of normal incomes. Nor is there scarcely any construction property to be found on the French Cote d'Azur.

  But at Calpe, on Spain's Costa Blanca, a vacation apartment in a concrete high-rise can be obtained for 50,000 euros (US$43,000).

  Those searching for the peace and quiet of the Mediterranean must do so from their balconies, for down on the streets there is the noise of the Carneval Club -- which was established by the permanent German residents of Calpe.
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