Buying a Property in Florida

If you love Florida, like us and many other Brits, you may be tempted to buy your own place. Property is much cheaper than in the UK and seems to be a pretty safe investment. Mortgage rates in the USA are low (though they may well rise gradually over the next year or so). One obvious and popular way is buying-to-let. Especially around Orlando, there is a thriving short-term rental market.

It is relatively easy to buy remotely, but there is still a lot of work and more than enough stress involved. There are several companies around who specialise in helping Brits to buy holiday villas in the USA (as well as other countries). These companies will help you with every step of the process and some even provide a full property management service afterwards. However, some of these companies are only interested in helping you buy a new property (on which they receive a healthy commission). There is nothing really wrong with this - the commission is payed by the builders, but at the end of the day, they get their money from you. Perhaps more worryingly the prospect of this commission might distort the advice you get. We believe we experienced this effect directly and it led to a loss of trust.

This is almost certainly the easiest way to buy a property in Florida. Not only do you benefit from the experience of a specialised company, but it is easier to choose a new property remotely - you can get pictures, floor-plans, descriptions and site-plans and you don't have to worry about the condition of the place. But, the strong pound / weak dollar has led to many more Brits buying property in Florida and this is currently helping to fuel house price inflation - especially in new houses and especially on the development sites that are working with these companies. This could well be as a direct consequence of the accessability of these houses to foreign investors.

So there is real competition to buy these places. The prices are going up quickly and you may have to get in a queue to buy. Currently, you are most unlikely to be buying a home that has just been completed, but making a down-payment on a house that will be completed in 12 to 18 months. This may be your ideal - you get to choose the colours, finishes and options, the down-payment fixes the price and you have a long time to arrange the rest of the finances (but also an agonisingly long time before you get to see and use your new home).

We chose a different route. There is a very active market in "previously owned" homes. You can tap into this by visiting web sites such as Realtor.com. This is a great way to see what is a available in a given price range. It will certainly wet your appetite, but you will spend many hours trawling the web and it is difficult to make a remote purchase this way.

If you are buying a property to let as a vacation home, you need to be certain that property is zoned for short-term rental. This information is not normally given on the websites available to you and me. Also houses that are zoned for short-term rental sell very quickly, so it is almost impossible to find a place and get over to see it before someone else has bought it. This can really only work well if you have a realtor finding homes that meet your requirements and sending you the information as soon as they hit the market. A "realtor" is similar to a UK estate agent, but the role differs in several important ways.

In the USA, it is normal to have one realtor representing the buyers and one representing the sellers. The realtor who acts as your agent will not only help you to find the right home, but will also take care of your interests right the way through to completion. Solicitors (this name will bring a smile to the face of your american contacts, who deal with "attorneys") are not normally directly involved in this process, with most of the paperwork being handled by the realtors. Clearly your realtor has to be someone you can really trust and that trust can be difficult to establish at a distance. We were very lucky to make contact with such a person early in our search for a home. Sue Vasquez at Watson Realty not only proved to be deserving of the trust that we placed in her, but was able to establish that trust before we ever met face-to-face. We described what we were looking for. Sue listened to us and provided a steady stream of possible buys with comments to guide us. This quickly led to us flying over to view a home that was everything we hoped it would be - the home we now offer for rent on this website. Throughout this process, Sue Vasquez always understood what we wanted and gave us great advice.

Property Management

If you decide to buy a home for vacation rental, you will almost certainly need the services of a property management company. These companies ft_maintain the house, garden and pool. They will usually help to get bookings and will help your guests to make the most of their holidays. Finally, they will help (to a varied extent) with insurance, utilities, licences and tax. It would be very difficult to manage all of this remotely - you need to be able to entrust these essential activities to a company that knows what it's doing and takes it's responsibilities seriously. There are many to choose from, and the quality of service can vary significantly, so you need to do some careful research. Probably the best strategy is to get the views of a number of existing villa owners in the community you have chosen.

Footnotes

Please note that we have no financial interest in making the above recommendations. We have not received and will not receive any commission or fee associated with this advice. We are not experts in Florida State Law with regard to property, nor are we financial experts. While we believe the above advice to be accurate and hope it will be useful, it is important to seek expert advice before making any commitments.

Finally, we found the following books a very useful starting point for our endeavours: You can get both of these at   www.amazon.co.uk