Ed McKnight: Should you buy a holiday home?

As 2025 settles in and everyone settles back into work, you may be left daydreaming about that bach you rented over the Christmas break.  

You may be tempted to buy one of your own – but should you? 

Ed McKnight joined Francesca Rudkin to run through the pros and cons of buying a holiday house. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to this Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks AB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
And joining me now from Ope's Partners to talk Money
is Ed McKnight.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
How are you ed, Oh, Francesca's wonderful to talk to
you again.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Have you had a chance to have a bit of
a break or have you spent the time sort of
moving into your new home and settling in?

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Well, do you know what? This is the first weekend
I'm actually spending him a new home because we did
manage to go on holiday. We headed over to the
Northern Hemisphere, over to Switzerland for a bit of skiing.
We were very lucky.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Okay, all right then, so you wouldn't have been sitting
at the beach in New Zealand in a lovely sort
of kew we bat going gosh, you know that you
might have rented for the summer going Actually, wouldn't it
be great if we were able to afford a batch?

Speaker 3 (00:51):
Well? I personally wasn't, but I know that there are
a lot of Kewis who do this. You head off
to the beach and you look at your partner and think, gosh,
wouldn't it be great to come back here? Every couple
of weeks, maybe we should look into buying a holiday home.
Or I'll tell you now story. I was in Ohakeuney
earlier this year, and as you're on holiday there, you
walk past the real estate companies, you pop your head

(01:14):
in the window, and if you're from one of the
largest cities, you might look at the house prices in
a smaller town and think, do you know what, that's
not that bad. It's cheap compared to where we live.
Maybe we should think about a holiday home. So what
are some signs that it's a good idea. What are
some signs that's a bad idea. Well, I think if
you're into some sort of sport like boating or snow

(01:37):
sports like skiing and snowboarding, then sometimes it actually can
be a good idea to have a holiday home because
you've got all of this equipment and you need a
place to store your stuff, because it can be very
inconvenient if every couple of weeks you've got to pack
up your whole entire car and caut everything down four
hours down to Acuney or wherever it happens to be,

(01:58):
and having that holiday home it can just be a
really useful place to store your stuff. I'll tell you
another time that buying a holiday home can be a
good idea. Sometimes people have family batches and they've been
going there for years and years and years, and then
they get the opportunity to buy their parents out. Well,
that can be an okay idea as well. But what
I really just want to warn people against is that

(02:21):
idea that sometimes you buy a holiday home and then
people tell me, look ed, we don't actually go down
to the holiday home to the batch as much as
we thought we would. And so if you've already gone
there a lot, because it's been a family home, or
because you play a sport, well those are some good
signs that you're actually going to make good use of
this property. Whereas if you've only gone to this place once,

(02:45):
it might be somewhere in the corn Handle, and this
is your first time at that beach, it might be
a bit too hasty to say, let's start looking at properties,
because you haven't really proven to yourself that you are
going to use this. One alternative I'll just suggest for
people is if you are going to buy a holiday home,
you're going to spend money on rates. You're going to
be spending money on insurance, you're going to be spending

(03:05):
on mate, it might be five grand plus a year,
and one alternative to buying a holiday home is to
take that money and just go to different airbnbs around
the country and test out different spots. You know, we
don't always need to have one solid spot that we
go to every time for twenty years. Sometimes people get
bored of that particular town and a better idea might

(03:29):
just be to use that same amount of money you
would have spent on rates, insurance, maintenance and go to
lots of different towns.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
And of course that's the important part of it too,
isn't it, EDGHG. Have to work out what it is
going to cost you and whether you will be able
to maybe potentially read it out for the you know,
for a period of time throughout the year, in order
to contribute to those costs as well. Thanks so much
for your thoughts, ed. Nice to catch up with you.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
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