Those of you who have read my previous posts about the surroundings of lake Balaton in Hungary may know how beautiful this landscape is. The lake is the longest lake in Europe and stretches over a length of 82 kilometers. The lake is narrow and also quite flat, meaning the deepest point of the lake is only 11-12 meters depending on how much water is in the lake.
Image by holdosi from Pixabay modified in adobe express pro
On the northside just about 25 kilometers from the half island Tihany with its beautiful monestary amd lavender gardens lies Révfülöp. Translated to english the city would be called Philip's Harbor. The harbor building is also the backdrop for the hungarian morning show "jo reggelt Magyarorszag" during the summer season.
Only a few kilometers to the north lies the beautiful Kali Basin which is part of a natural park. It is a beautiful and diverse landscape with a ton of interesting sites. You can not mention this region without also talking about the many vinyards and whineries making mostly white dry whine like Risling, and Chardonnay.
The surroundings of the lake are of course focussed on tourism and therefore it is hard to find property around the lake but as you move northwards into small villages it gets easier to find property for sale at a reasonable price.
During the years of the pandemic a lot of Budapest citizens came to buy properties and drove up prices by over 200 %. Over the past few years these prices skyrocketed even higher.
My family has a really small property which is a recreational one, so you are technically not able to use it as a residence. Residential properties are basically sold out. I have been spending my vacations here for over 30 years now. A lot has changed since then. The infrastructure around the lake got much better. It is now possible to go around the lake with your bicikli (Hungarian for bicycle) and you will have bikelanes next to the railroad tracks or through villages. You only have to cross the main road a few times but you are almost always protected from car traffic.
But enough of the qualities of the lake and its surroundings. Me and my wife are searching for a property in Révfülöp and for that we go some extra lenght. We are in constant talks with several families who have bigger properties and would be willing to sell a part of theirs, and we are constantly monitoring all property agent sites.
A property right next to the cemetery with residential permit where you need to start construction by law after a maximum of 2 years. This would be at around 30000 Euros. The properties location is not ideal since it is quite close to 2 main roads causing for a significant sound disturbance. You don"t want to vacay here. Although the neighbours are dead silent.
But we also have another problem. The thing is that it is almost impossible to find a property where you would actually get a permit for a building of any type. The laws are very strict and you need to have a certain size of land to be able to build a vacation home or even house.
The solution is quite simple and it is also very cost effective. You do not need a building permit and it does not matter what type of property you have if the roof over your head is mobile. You can just park your camper or caravan and plug in electricity and connect to the water (if you have those on your property)
If you want even more independence you can opt for the thing we would really love to own.
A tiny house on wheels. For that purpose we checked out a company who I really hope to onboard to hive by the way. (I will send them this post on instagram)
They specialize in engineering you the tiny home of your dreams and their "houses" need absolutely 0 permits since you can baiscally move them wherever you want as long as the owner of the property allows it.
Another service of theirs are tiny houses as investments. You buy a tiny house they store it on a property and rent it to tourists. You lean back and enjoy the passive income and pay them a commission each time they rent your tiny house to someone. Pretty neat.
The company won the Hungarian version of Shark Tank and got a good VC invest at the beginning.
They seem to be quite small yet but I think it is a pretty good business model since you have to sources of income. The construction of tiny homes and the rental market of the very same homes they construct.
These homes come in different categories with 2 different lengths and different types of interior designs. You can get a 8,5 m Home fully equipped with bathroom and toilet a bedroom and a living room kitchen combination and a bunch of hidden storage. The construction also hides a 1000 liter fresh water tank and 4 car batteries and a PB gas tank for the heating and the stove.
The price for a fully functional home starts from 62500 Euros including VAT (27%) and delivery on the property of your choice. That is way cheaper than building your own house with all the office runs for permits and a bunch of workers to be paid on the construction site. You get a fully functional home that can exist for a few days completely off grid if you want that. Or plugged into a source of energy it can stay stationary and serve as a nice vacation home.
If you want to make it fully autonomous you can opt for having a solar energy panel on top of the tiny house for electricity and warm water and heat with wood in your oven.
Of course the best option is to be in a country with almost the same temperatures over the year. If you have this home on the Azores off the cost from Protugal you can just opt out of putting a heating unit and have more space for storage.
For us since we have not found the right property yet the main task for now is to find a good place for our tiny home. As soon as we have secured that we will move to construction of a tiny house. We plan to use it as a vacation hokme and when we are not using it it will be rented out.
I will personally handle rentals since I have the time to organize bookings and also maintain the house myself. This way I do not have to pay any commission and just have to pay the local tourist tax after each of our guests.
This brings a pretty decent ROI depending on how actively you rent out the tiny house you could fully get your investment back in about 7-10 Years. The company gives a 10 year warranty on their homes but I am sure if you keep maintaining it you can easily have this type of house for more than 3 decades.
The best part: you can just move that thing to another place with your own SUV or Van. You only need permission from the owner of a property to make camp. If you have the completely autonomous version you can put yourself in the middle of nowhere for months if you want to.
The photos where taken by me during our research for tiny homes and properties.
If you want to check out the house we had a look at you can go to the official website:
https://tinyhouseszallasok.hu/accommodation/tiny-house-balaton/
I hope you enjoyed this read and if you have made it here I can sponsor you 1 HSBI if you send me 0.001 HIVE with the memo "Property" I will send to a maximum of 25 accounts.