A well known travel company recently calculated that the average Briton spends £168,000 on holidays during their adult lifetime, taking 121 trips and forking out an average £2,784 a year.
Going on these figures, buying an overseas property - somewhere you can go for regular cheap breaks - seems very attractive, especially given the discounts currency available. With holiday homes in most popular destinations realistically available for £100k - £120k, it makes you wonder what you would do with that £168k if you were given it outright. Of course, with an overseas property you'll still havetravel costs to consider, but you could cover some, if not all, of these expenses through short-term rentals. And if you were to retire to your overseas home, you're less likely to spend money on holidays to warner climes to escape the cold UK winters.
At the recent A Place in the Sun Live exhibition in London I met readers who were looking for holiday homes. As expected, established European destinations and properties in Florida were in demand. But wandering around, I also spotted some more unusual places to buy and you can read out these in the April 2011 issue of A Place in the Sun magazine. Other higlights in the issue include our property hunt feature where we help a reader with a budget of £45k find a property in "Green" north-west Spain, our guide to the best places currently to buy in Orlando and an insight into Cappadocia, a fascinating inland region of Turkey.
There's a guide to getting the most from your relationship with your currency broker when buying a property overseas and we look at why French leaseback is a safe way of combining a French holiday home with a guaranteed source of hassle-free rental income.
If you have a tale or an opinion about buying or living abroad, tell us in an email or write to us. You never know, you might win our letter of the month prize.
Richard Way, Editor
A Place in the Sun magazine