By Oliver Beck · Letters from the Editor
Every July, I find myself writing this column with a sharper sense of what separates the investors who compound wealth through international property from those who compound anxiety instead. The difference, almost always, comes down to one thing: how seriously they take regulatory risk. Not the risk of a market declining — that is recoverable, and recoverable quickly in good assets. The risk of owning something you are not legally entitled to own, or renting it out under a licence that no longer exists, or underwriting a yield model that a new VAT surcharge has just made unworkable. That is where fortunes get permanently impaired, and where the conversations I dread having with readers tend to start.
July 2026 is a genuinely interesting moment in the global holiday home market, and not because conditions are uniformly good or uniformly bad. The divergence between markets is wider than I have seen in a decade. Some are accelerating — structurally, not just on sentiment. Others are in a transitional fog that is entirely resolvable, but will look considerably clearer in six months' time. Knowing which category a market belongs to is, in my view, the entire game. It determines whether you are buying at an intelligent entry point or simply buying into the last chapter of a story that has already changed.
Here are the three markets I would put money into right now, and one I would watch — but not touch — until the picture sharpens.
Pick One: Bali — for buyers prepared to do the compliance work
I will be direct: Bali is not a simple market. It has never been a simple market, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either unfamiliar with Indonesian corporate law or has a villa to sell you. But right now, for USD-denominated buyers who are prepared to structure correctly and engage serious local legal counsel, the combination of circumstances on the ground is rare enough that it warrants being explicit about.
The Indonesian rupiah hit 18,209 to the US dollar on June 9th of this year — a record low. At the start of January 2026, you were paying 16,681 IDR per USD. That 10.82% depreciation over six months is not noise, and it is not a temporary blip driven by a single event. It reflects a cluster of structural pressures: elevated oil import costs spiking Indonesia's current-account deficit to 1.1% of GDP, foreign equity and bond outflows of Rp26 trillion, reduced commodity export revenues, and a geopolitical risk premium tied to the Iran conflict that is not going away on any short horizon. Bank Indonesia has hiked 100 basis points since May — the policy rate now sits at 5.75% — which may provide some near-term stability, but the structural picture supports sustained IDR weakness for the foreseeable future.
The IDR/USD depreciation of 10.82% since January 2026 means a villa priced at $300,000 in USD terms now costs a Bali-based vendor materially less in real local purchasing power than it did at the start of the year. For USD buyers acquiring correctly structured assets, this is a genuine pricing advantage layered on top of rental yields of 8–14% — yields that remain among the highest in Asia-Pacific for compliant holiday property.
What makes this moment additionally significant is the compliance rationalisation now under way. The NIB (business registration) deadline passed on March 31, 2026. Approximately 90% of villas on the island remain non-compliant. I want to be very precise about what this means, because I have seen it misread. It does not mean that non-compliant villas represent a buying opportunity at a discount. Foreigners acquiring property through nominee structures, or operating rentals without a PT PMA entity and a valid KBLI 55193 villa licence, face deportation and a six-year blacklist on re-entry to Indonesia. The enforcement is real, it is escalating, and it is not being applied selectively. The compliance requirement is the price of entry to this market, full stop.
The actual opportunity is different, and it is a structural one: compliant assets — those operating through a properly constituted PT PMA structure — are becoming easier to identify as non-compliant competitors are systematically removed from booking platforms. Supply rationalisation of this kind, in a market with genuine underlying demand from international leisure travellers, tends to benefit compliant operators disproportionately. Entry prices for properly structured Bali villas start at approximately $200,000. One additional tax point for non-resident buyers: Indonesia's withholding tax on rental income sits at 20% for non-residents, falling to 10% for those who spend 183 or more days per year in-country. Factor that into your yield calculations before signing anything.
Pick Two: Coorg and Wayanad — India's hill stations, bought in monsoon
I spend more time than most editors thinking about the Indian holiday home market, and I keep arriving at the same conclusion. The genuine value in Indian leisure property is not found in coastal North Goa during peak season, when every developer has a glossy brochure, a waiting list, and pricing that has absorbed the past 28% year-on-year appreciation into the ask. The value is in the markets that look least attractive on paper during the periods when they look least attractive — which is exactly when motivated sellers accept below-ask and developers who have accumulated unsold inventory become negotiable.
July is monsoon season across the Western Ghats. In Coorg, Karnataka, the coffee estates that trade at ₹60–90 lakh per acre are draped in mist and intermittent rain. In Wayanad, Kerala — approximately two and a half hours from Calicut airport — the tea and coffee plantations are at their most verdant and their most overlooked by buyers. This seasonal dynamic is entirely predictable and entirely exploitable by buyers who understand that the underlying demand fundamentals have not changed: India's growing domestic high-net-worth class, the absence of alternative nature retreats within a half-day of Bengaluru or Kochi, and a hard supply ceiling created by forest and agricultural land protections that restrict what can be built and where.
Monsoon discounts in North Goa typically run 8–14% below peak-season pricing, and developers in slower-moving hill station markets tend to be more flexible still during July and August. This is the window. The buyers who built the best India holiday home positions in the past five years largely did it during conditions that looked, superficially, like poor timing.
My specific recommendation applies equally here and to any Indian holiday home purchase: RERA-registered projects only. Karnataka and Kerala operate different RERA compliance environments, and the standard of due diligence required varies accordingly. RERA registration for the specific project — not just the developer's umbrella registration — must be verified before any deposit is paid. The protections it provides, including statutory escrow of buyer funds, enforceable completion timelines, and developer accountability mechanisms, are precisely what distinguishes a sound monsoon acquisition from an expensive lesson. Do not purchase from any developer who cannot produce a current, project-specific RERA certificate on request.
Pick Three: Turks & Caicos — a British territory with improved structural credentials
Turks & Caicos does not receive the attention it deserves in the UK market. I suspect this is partly because GBP/USD is not at particularly favourable levels right now, which creates a psychological friction for British buyers that tends to push attention elsewhere. That currency consideration is real, and I would not dismiss it. But the structural advantages of this market are sufficiently compelling that they warrant stating plainly, because they tend to get overlooked in favour of markets with better headline rates.
This is a British Overseas Territory. There is no income tax, no capital gains tax, and no inheritance tax. Property ownership by non-residents is straightforward by Caribbean standards — significantly more so than in markets such as St Kitts or parts of the Bahamas, where the legal frameworks for foreign buyers are more complex. Hurricane resilience has improved materially following the damage and rebuild cycles of recent years: the building codes now in force on new developments in Turks & Caicos are meaningfully more stringent than those in comparable Caribbean markets, a direct and welcome consequence of hard lessons learned. And the buyer pool is dominated by American purchasers, which means the resale market is liquid in USD terms regardless of where sterling happens to be trading at any given moment.
Turks & Caicos levies no income tax, capital gains tax, or inheritance tax on property owners. For UK buyers structuring international property portfolios against an increasingly complex domestic and European tax backdrop, this simplicity has compounding value over a long hold period — particularly relative to southern European jurisdictions that are actively extending their reach over non-resident property income.
The GBP/USD rate is manageable, not ideal. If you are buying primarily for a sterling-denominated retirement, you are accepting USD-denominated rental income and capital gains, which introduces currency exposure that must be factored into the hold-period model. But if you are constructing a genuinely international property portfolio where a USD income stream is a feature rather than a complication, the tax efficiency, legal clarity, and market liquidity of Turks & Caicos make it difficult to identify a meaningfully better alternative in the British-administered Caribbean at this point in time.
The market we are watching, not buying: Spain's STR investment thesis
I want to be precise about this, because Spain is not a bad property market long-term and I have no interest in being misread. The appeal of Spanish real estate — the climate, the infrastructure, the domestic and international demand for leisure property — is not in question. What is in question, specifically and for the moment, is the short-term rental income model that the majority of buyers are underwriting when they purchase a Spanish holiday home with investment intent.
The data from this year is striking. The Spanish government has removed 86,275 illegal vacation rental listings from Airbnb and Booking.com — the largest single STR enforcement action in European history. Platform supply has fallen 12.4% year-on-year. In March 2026, a court ordered Airbnb to pay a €64 million fine for failing to delist 65,122 non-compliant listings. As of this month, Spain is legislating a 21% VAT surcharge on all short-term tourist rentals as part of a July 2026 package that also targets fraudulent tenancy agreements and the tax treatment of tourist-use properties. If you are modelling your yield on pre-2026 comparable rental income, you are modelling on a market that no longer exists in the same form.
Barcelona is the sharpest example of where this trajectory leads. The city has confirmed it will not renew any of its 10,101 HUT (Habitual Tourist Use) licences when they expire in November 2028. This is not regulatory ambiguity — it is a hard phase-out with a fixed date, driven by explicit political commitment to addressing the displacement of long-term residents. And since May 20, 2026, EU Regulation 2024/1028 has required Airbnb and Booking.com to share listing-level data monthly with national authorities, with mandatory removal orders for any unlicensed listing identified through that process. This is structural change, not a temporary tightening that will relax when political attention moves elsewhere.
None of this means avoid Spain indefinitely. It means that the regulatory picture around the STR income model — the model most buyers are implicitly or explicitly relying on — will look considerably clearer in six months. The 21% VAT legislation will have passed or been amended. The Barcelona phase-out mechanics will be better understood. Comparable yield data under the new regime will be available. You will be in a position to make a properly underwritten decision rather than guessing at outcomes that are still in legislative flux. A better-informed entry point is worth six months of patience.
Our view
The best property investors I know share one characteristic that has nothing to do with financial sophistication or access to deal flow. They take regulatory risk seriously — not as a box to check before signing, but as a genuine first-order input into the buying decision. They do not buy compliant-enough assets. They do not assume that enforcement will remain lax because it has been lax in the past. And they do not confuse a good property with a good investment structure, which is a distinction that costs a great deal of money to learn the hard way.
The three markets I have highlighted this month — Bali for compliant USD buyers, India's monsoon hill stations on RERA-registered projects, and Turks & Caicos for portfolio buyers comfortable with USD income — are interesting for different reasons. But they share one quality that I value above most others in the current environment: the risk can be identified, priced, and managed with precision. Spain's STR market in July 2026 cannot yet be fully priced. The framework is still being written. Wait six months. The assets will still be there, and you will know a great deal more about what you are buying.
Oliver Beck is Editor of Holiday Home Times. He writes monthly on global holiday home markets, investment structure, and the regulatory environments that shape both.