By Roshan L. D’Silva · Smart Buy
This series began by asking how many weeks a year you would really go. It ends with what happens when the answer becomes “all of them”.
A great many people buy a holiday home with a half-formed idea that they might retire to it. Some do, and it is the best decision they ever made. Others discover that the house which was perfect for three weeks in July is a difficult place to live in February, and that the move involves several gates they had not looked at.
Three gates, in order
Residency. Owning property somewhere and being allowed to live there are different things, and in most countries buying a house grants you nothing beyond the house. You will need a visa or permit that lets you stay long-term, and the requirements — income thresholds, health insurance, police certificates, minimum days present — are specific and change often. Our destination factbooks carry the current position market by market.
Healthcare. The question is not whether the country has good hospitals. It is whether you will be entitled to use the public system, at what age, and what private cover costs for someone of your age with your history — because private medical insurance is priced very differently at seventy than at fifty, and pre-existing conditions are frequently excluded on new policies taken out late.
Tax residence. Moving permanently usually makes you tax resident in the new country, which changes how your pension, investments and any rental income are taxed, and sometimes how your estate will be treated. Double taxation agreements matter enormously here and they are not intuitive. This is the point at which you need an accountant in both countries, before you move, not after.
Then the practical questions, which decide it more often
The gates above are administrative. What actually determines whether people stay is more ordinary than that.
Can you get around without driving? This is the one people underestimate most. A house up a track with a ten-minute drive to bread is charming at sixty and isolating at eighty. Ask, honestly, what happens to daily life in that property on the day you stop driving.
Does the house work on one level? Or can it be made to? A bedroom and a bathroom reachable without stairs is the difference between staying and moving. Worth thinking about at the point of purchase, which is why we raised it in the floor-plan article.
Who is there in winter? A resort town in low season is a very quiet place. Retiring somewhere that empties for eight months is a different proposition from retiring in a working town, and both suit different people. The off-season visit recommended in the shortlisting article matters twice as much here.
Can you build a life in the language you have? A holiday runs perfectly well on fifty words. Doctors, banks, builders, neighbours and local administration do not. People who learn the language settle; people who do not tend to live inside a small expatriate circle, which works for some and is lonely for others.
How easily do family visit? The flight that was fine four times a year is now the thing that determines how often you see your children and grandchildren. Access matters more in retirement, not less.
The test
The same one that works everywhere else in this series, applied harder: live there for three consecutive months, off-season, before you sell anything at home.
Not a long holiday — three months, in the worst quarter of the year, doing ordinary things. Register with a doctor. Get something repaired. Be bored there. A surprising number of people do this and decide to keep the house as a holiday home, which is a perfectly good outcome and a great deal cheaper than discovering it after selling the family home.
And keep the exit open
Whatever you decide, do not close off the ability to change your mind. Selling a primary home to fund a move abroad is difficult to reverse, particularly in a rising market at home. Letting it for a year rather than selling costs some yield and buys a return ticket.
The people I have seen do this best treat the first two years as reversible. The ones who struggle are those who burned the boats and then felt they could not admit it.
Nothing here is immigration, medical or tax advice, and every one of these rules is country-specific and changes. Take professional advice in both jurisdictions before making an irreversible move.