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.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS