By Lyn Cox
Is this the year to allow emotion into
decision-mak Who didn’t feel sorry for the tourism sector in 2020? They were hit pretty hard, from the humblest of camping grounds to the luxury waterfront residences, from world-wide high end adventure tours to exotic overseas island destinations. Most of us would love to get back out there, but this year it appears we are prepared to look at planning time away from home a bit differently. Pre-COVID or now, most of us would love to get away several times a year but it is usually hard to justify the spend. Are you someone who has
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always gazed longingly at real estate agency windows and collected all the brochures every time you’re away from home? Of course, it would be much easier if you owned your own holiday home, wouldn’t it?
What if you own a holiday home? You have a place to go - take that flight, road trip or train journey - to somewhere other than your primary residence. For you, it’s no longer a pipe dream.
A holiday home is formally defined as ‘a building or piece of property used as a secondary residence for vacation purposes.’ Sounds awfully boring, doesn’t it!
This year we are told that many of us are looking to combine working remotely within a holiday environment, with Zoom or similar our meeting room; and taking longer holidays to explore the surroundings outside working hours.
Also known as a shack (often by South Australians and Tasmanians), a bach (by New Zealanders), a weekender, a cabin, a villa, a summer house, or perhaps a bothy, which is commonly left unlocked in Scotland and available for anyone to use free of charge. Let’s assume we want a holiday, need a holiday, but we can’t get on a plane and travel overseas. However, we can do domestic travel, whether that be by air, road, or train.
Agents are noticing increased interest in holiday home purchases. Perhaps the working-from-home scenario will stamp 2021 as the year of the rise in holiday home sales. It is also possibly a year where our lifestyle has become more important to us and we’ll allow a little more emotion into our decision-making when it comes to property investment.
