45% more Brits climb the foreign property ladder

As the nights draw in and the Summer of 2006 becomes a distant memory, latest research from MINTEL finds around 800,000 British households (3%) now enjoy the benefits of owning a second residence abroad. Over the last two years the number of overseas property owners has increased by a staggering 45%, with 250,000 more households now owning an overseas property than in June 2004. What is more, a further 3% of households intend to buy a second property overseas in the future and 5% intend to sell up here and move abroad. This suggests that potentially the dream of owning a property abroad could be a reality for a further 2 million households. Meanwhile, many people see the Lottery as their only means of escape, with as many as one in five (22%) or 5.5 million households planning to buy a foreign property if their ship comes in.