Getting Good Advice

The importance of ensuring your agent is able offer you good advice

As the year draws to a close, those of us unlucky enough to live in frosty northern climes start to think of a home in the winter sun.  Our reasons are various, but predictable: the quality of life, the cost of living, crime, short days and long, cold nights all serve to imprison us in homes.  Life goes by and we glue ourselves to our televisions, watching others living and enjoying it.  We stop work, retire and that time which we had hoped would liberate us from responsibility and set us free becomes set in the rhythm of the TV Times.

No wonder so many of us choose to retire in Tenerife.  Unshackled by the sun, pasty pensioners take tentative footsteps outside, rediscover life, enjoyment and pleasure.  And I’m not exaggerating.  Life takes on a new sense of purpose, aches fade away and faces rediscover little used creases that used to be smiles.  Tenerife inspires.

One in five of us who buy a property on this island, do so to retire.  They are the brave ones.  Many hanker for the lifestyle, but guilt prevents them.  They worry about their children and grandchildren.  They worry about frittering away the inheritance that they intended to leave them.  A property in the sun seems a selfish luxury, not a sensible investment.  No matter the growth in property values, the enjoyment their home can offer their grandchildren, they worry.

Perhaps the greatest worry they have is about the quality of advice they receive.  And in this, I have to sympathise.  Estate agents here are terribly good at selling property, but rarely are able to give their clients the full picture.  Generally this is because either they are untrained, or just uninterested.  So they gloss over.  It is a real shame.

With proper advice from a well resourced estate agent, the inheritance tax liability of a property here can be slashed massively – a 90% saving is not unusual, and that’s not small potatoes!  Wealth tax can be reduced to next to nothing and incomes can be created.  Obviously such advice must come from a licensed and regulated adviser, but it should be the responsibility of the agent to recognise the circumstances in which that advice is needed, and call in the experts.  This relies on an established estate agent with a proper network of contacts.  It relies on the agent being sufficiently knowledgeable.

I guess, slowly, estate agents here will catch up.  Eventually they will understand that there is much more to selling property than getting a signature on the dotted line.  But until that time, choose your agent with care.  You can retire here, have a great investment, save on tax and enjoy your life.  There is nothing to fear when you have solid and responsible advice from a reputable agent, so do yourself a favour and treat yourself to a new lease of life this Christmas.  Not just for your sake, but for your family as well.