Return to Lapland

After two consecutive days of incomprehensible ramblings and the fact that i've finally found time to think about what to write, I am today going to return to the subject of Lapland and continue the theme of what this blog was intended to be about.

My subject matter for today is about the purchase process from start to finish and how I see that our experience has differed from so many of the horror stories that i've heard and read about people and their overseas property investments. Firtsly, when I started looking for a property, I was advised to allow approximately 15-20% in addition to the purchase price to take care of all the incidentals such as solicitors fees, currency fluctuations, taxes in the country of purchase etc etc... and from some friends and acquaintances who I know have purchased have heard the real costs to be much higher in several instances. Try to imagine for a moment the possible increase in cost of a property on sale for approximately 200,000 Euros, i'm sure you can see that another 30 -40,000 Euros would for some people be the difference between making the decision to purchase and not.

Moving on, I am now going to detail the process for our purchase, firstly, we agreed a sale price for the cabin that was just short of 200,000 Euros including a sum for the furniture pack. We then sent an initial deposit to the seller of 2500 Euros and this secured the purchase for us (Our bank charge for this payment was £14 GBP). Next we appointed a Finnish Solicitor based in London in the UK who looked over our contract and mortgage (provided by Nordea Bank in Finland) and advised us accordingly. As we did this in conjunction with a friend, this cost us approximately £1320 GBP (It is probably fair to say that if we had acted entirely on our own then this would probably have been double). Next we had to pay a couple of small charges to Nordea Bank for arranging the mortgage loan but these amounted to no more than 200 Euros. Once the contract had been agreed, we had to make one large transfer payment (the balance of the monies not covered by the mortgage) to the seller and we did this through a currency conversion company in the UK and for getting the funds to them instantly, our UK bank charge for this was £25 GBP. Finally, the last stage of the process was to pay the property tax in Finland (a grand total of 1.6% of the property price, excluding the cost of the furniture pack) this cost us another 2824 Euros.

After calculating the costs of all the above, I would estimate that in addition to the purchase price of 189,000 Euros, we actually paid an additional 5000 Euros for taking care of all the incidentals. After the advice we had received prior to purchase, the fact that our incidentals only came to around an extra 3% suggests to me that we got a great deal by purchasing in Finland as opposed to making a purchase in one of the more popular european destinations. That's not to say that Finland or Lapland in particular is for everyone!

Purcahse Partners

Before finishing up, I want to make a few mentions of the partners used in the purchasing process as they were all of great assistance and support to us. They are all most definitely worthy of a mention as they played vital roles in making the purchase process run smoothly for us and they proved that the Finns can be trusted in these matters. Furthermore, they also enhanced their reputation with us that Finland is the least corrupt country in the world.

http://www.gmrlaw.com/ For Finnish legal advice (Practice based in London)

http://www.nordea.fi/ Bank for arranging mortgages in Finland (Best online banking facility around)

http://www.worldwidecurrencies.com/ For international currency conversions (great rates and service)

Finally, if there is anything specific that anyone wants to know about purchasing in Finland or about purchasing in any other destinations for that matter (we have many partners who can help find your dream investment) please get in touch and i'll try and help. For more information on our cabin check out the following site http://www.chooselapland.com