Should read Holiday Lodge of course

done ;-)

Edited by oilrag (Moderator) on 26/07/2010 at 21:45

Make sure you understand what you are buying. There's a lot to it, and the stuff below is just a start.

You will not be buying the land, you'll be at most buying the right to place a home on it. You need to check whether or not there are time limits and what other conditions may exist.

You will probably be buying the first "house" on it. What conditions are there ? How much may you use it in a year, are there periods when you may not use it at all etc. etc. Can rent be charged, can maintenance charges be increased etc.

Also, do you have to replace the home at a certain age, or keep it in a certain condition and who is the judge?

So do holiday lodges work out the same as static caravans? If not then pardon the irrelevance. My instinct tells me they possibly do however.

First of all they are no investment at all, other than in pleasure. Site owners pretty well hold all the cards. They will probably want a hefty commission if you sell, and if you don't pay site fees they'll repo. it and sell it to someone else. On top of this they may well place a time limit of 20 years on the whole thing, then you either buy another one or walk away from it.

I have a cheap static van in Wales. The site owner wants £2k a year site fees, £2k if you sell it someone else, and wants it off after it's 20. It's a 1995 and I only paid £7k for it so just the price of a cheap new hatchback car. It's only 68 miles away and we love it, going nearly every week. The season is 47 weeks. When it's time is up then I'll have no complaints. If I had paid £25/30/40/50k for it though I'd feel a bit of a sucker myself. Shop around I'd say. If you take North Wales as an example there are 1000s of vans up for sale this year due to recession. I would not be too eager to play Father Christmas to a site owner to a huge sum myself.