When we bought the house here (11years ago) we were very tempted to 'Stretch' ourselves on the basis that rental income would help with the repayment of the loan we took on to buy the property, at that time it looked a perfectly sensible thing to do, most holidaymakers here used hotels, flights were cheap and the option to take your holiday in a house with use of a lovely big pool set in a private communal garden was quite attractive. Through either good luck or good management we resisted the temptation and bought well within our means at that time, that decision turned out to be immense. As the years past, building boomed and literally thousands of properties for holiday rental became available, in recent years we would not have been able to let our house out enough to make any profit and if depending on that income, we would have found ourselves in trouble.
So to my one piece of advice, please, if you are planning to retire here, try and make your plan where you don't rely on bank interest but view it as a bonus, I know that is easy to say and it's not easy to do and may delay your move for some years, but it could be the one decision that can make or break your retirement.
The line Scunner used about budgeting for the unexpected is spot on, before we came here last year we spent £16,000 on refurbishing the house, yet in the last year we have faced the following unexpected issues :
Leaks in Kitchen, Bedroom and Bathroom, pipes in our house are buried into the walls, so on each occasion it has meant digging up walls and floors to locate the leak.
Leaks to the balcony roof we use as a conservatory, new roof installed.
Solar water tank burst, new tank installed.
Immersion water heater failed and replaced.
Wooden floors damaged by the builder (he disputes) replaced with laminate.
An A4 page of snagging jobs, again disputed but sorted out and paid for by us.
The days of getting a tradesman into your home and jobs done for 'buttons' are long gone here, the above cost us a lot of money and never figured in any budget plans we prepared.