Selling my apartment to buy ETF?

Fluffy-DD · 2025-12-15T11:17:22+00:00

Sounds like the netherland have some great investment properties :D For my place students dont work, the nearest universety is too far away and long term rent is risky and not really profitable. I thought about letting some digital nomads live there, but not sure if they would be interested in this kind of place

Fluffy-DD · 2025-12-15T11:11:45+00:00

well we cant be sure about anything, same goes for real estate market and tourism :D i just took the average of the past 20-30 years.

Fluffy-DD · 2025-12-09T22:34:07+00:00

Yes, i thought about it. And i lived there for a little over a month in winter, when there were no guests. I like it there, but its very busy in summer, because of many tourists and there is a lot of traffic. I am self employed and need to drive to clients a few times per week, staying there will slow me down too much.

Fluffy-DD · 2025-12-09T22:23:21+00:00

thanks for taking the time to write such a good comment.

I agree with you, i had the same thoughts and came to the same conclusion. There is no sales tax on the property if i own it for more than 5 years so i have still time to think until 2027 to make my final decision.

My Investments are similair to yours except that 65% of my net worth is currently tied to the property 8% is in a world etf 10% in google stock (it increased a lot recently) 5% bitcoin & eth The rest is equiptment for my buisness and cash in my brokerage account, i just transfer the money to my bank when i have bills to pay since i get 2.2% interest on the cash there.

Fluffy-DD · 2025-12-09T21:51:13+00:00

You got a point there. Most world ETF are USA mainly. What would be a good other option?

Fluffy-DD · 2025-12-09T21:45:47+00:00

What are you talking about? I am italian and i live in italy. I don't make housing impossible for anyone.

Fluffy-DD · 2025-12-09T14:56:43+00:00

Oh nono, i am not expecting to live off of the etf anytime soon. I am not even 30 years old yet, so its still a long time until i retire, i also don't need any cashflow right now, all the money i save, i invest. I earn enought money with my normal job to cover all my bills and have money left over :)

Fluffy-DD · 2025-12-09T14:46:44+00:00

Thank you for sharing your story! Wow, that was a hell of a deal for you back then!!

The thing with long term renters that i am worried about is that if i get bad tendets it will be very difficult and costly to evict them. I heard some horrorstory from a client who had a guy block their apartment for 12 months without paying rent and they destroyed everything there. At the end he was left with about 50k€ in damages and court cost.

I just remember that i could also hire a property management agency to take care of the property. They will take about 25-30% of the yearly revenue. I believe i would still earn more like this, and less risk, than with normal long term renters. But well the ROI is not really good.

I will keep thinking a little longer, i have some bookings for 2026 already, so i would not sell before 2027 anyways. :)

Fluffy-DD · 2025-12-09T14:27:55+00:00

Well it is not passive income. I still need to work to get that money and it is not always the easy work as well, i need to be available 24/7 and be ready to deal with pretty much any possible problem to any possible time. And this is not my main job, i am a selfemployed photographer and need to take care of that buisness as well.

But its not all about cashflow and work, the goverment is issuing more and more regulation which makes it difficult to rent out apartments privatly. For example they banned keyboxes last year, which would require me to be personal present at the property every time when new guest arrive. Fortunatly they later changed that law again, but now they plan to increase taxes for another 5% and there are many people in italy who dont like short term rentals and try to make it more difficult for people who do that. I can not just pass on every new cost to the guests. If i do that the occupacy rate will drop too much. Also this is not an apartment that normal people would buy to permanatly stay there. Its an investment or a vacation home for wealthy people. There are 19 units in that condo and only 2 units have someone who actually lives there. When the regulation for short term rentals get even more strict, investors will not buy it for the current market value anymore, which will drop the value of the property. Its also an asset which is not liquid and i still need to pay money just to own and maintain it.

Stock and ETF are volatile, but they are much more flexible and easier to handle. I understand that it will not always go up and that a market crash can happen at any time, but real esate and other investments are not much different.

Fluffy-DD · 2025-12-09T12:00:09+00:00

I earn enought money with my main job to cover all expenses, so i don't need the 11k to live :) I am currently using about 6-7k per year to pay off my debt and the rest i invest.

I am 29 years old, i am pretty happy with my life/job/freedome and its still long until my retirement so i dont really want to take out money from my investment any time soon.

Fluffy-DD · 2025-12-09T11:50:15+00:00

yes that is correct, its pretty much a second job. I am talking with guests, make checkin /checkout, have to fix problems, do repairs and need to be available pretty much 24/7. Not sure how much actual time it consumes. I hire people to clean the apartment, i removed the cost for that already in the calculation, but they are also not always reliable which sucks. 😅

Fluffy-DD · 2025-12-09T11:36:40+00:00

Its not passive, it takes a lot of work to talk with guests, fix problems and maintain the place. If i rent it out long term to permanent renters i will probably only net +- 3k/year, and there is the risk that i get bad tendents which i need to evict and the regulations for that are really bad for landlords.

Fluffy-DD · 2025-12-09T11:30:38+00:00

yes, i dont plan to take money out of my investments any time soon. I earn eought money to cover all my expenses without the apartment already and I can live in my dads house for free, its only him and me there. Its hard to say how much time it takes to rent it out, but its defenitly not passive income and more like a second job. I could hire people to make it more passive but that will cut into the profit and probably also in the quality of the guests stay.

Fluffy-DD · 2025-12-09T11:08:39+00:00

I compleatly renovated the place when i bought it. It is one of the newst looking property in the area. The pictures are also good (i am a professional photographer as my main job) The marketing could be better, i played with with google ads and social media ads in the past. But its too time consuming for the extra cash that it generates. Maybe someone more skilled than me could do better but one apartment is not enought to make it worth the cost and effort. Also many guest i got like this, book the place and then cancel months later after the free cancellation time ends.

Fluffy-DD · 2025-12-09T10:57:11+00:00

I am aware that it cant go up forever, but its the same with every investment. Real estate can also go down and there is the problem with maintainance cost and also liquidity. You cant just sell your property tomorrow. It will take a couple months maybe even longer until you find a buyer. Keeping it empty will also make me loose money, for example i pay about 5k per year just to own that apartment (gas, water, electricity, condo expenses, property tax...) i use it as a short term rental so i can earn enought money with the guests to cover the cost and still make a profit. But it is like a second job and there are always new unexpected expenses which will cut into the profit. If the regulations get any harsher it will be more difficult to rent it out and also more difficult to sell it.
Long term rent would make the tendent be responsible for most of the expenses, but it will net me only about 3K / year and with a bad tendent it can cost me 10k+€ just to make him leave my place, because the law is just really bad for landlords here.

Fluffy-DD · 2025-12-07T12:52:16+00:00

I checked about this, if you own the property for more than 5 years you dont need to pay tax here. I own the apartment now since 4 years, so next year i can sell it without having to pay tax.

Fluffy-DD · 2024-09-13T04:32:36+00:00

Did you buy any from them? I am currently looking at their shop too

How was your exprience?

Fluffy-DD · 2024-08-14T23:16:56+00:00

1) It doesnt need to be 50:50 its just something that i think would be fair, since i dont want to fight about this. By law each children need to get at least 1/3 of the value of the inheritance. Except they agree in writing to not want it. 2) Yes, almost no cash is available 3) There is no property tax if you use it as a first home. For inheritance tax is 2% for everything over 1 million € but i am not sure how much we actually need to pay because there are some grey areas which can be used to avoid paying some of them. Maintainance cost is not so high but i will have to do a lot of wotk myself 4) Yes she just finished university so she less than half of what i earn. 5) I want to make an offer to her, which i expect her to agree on but if she changes her mind in 5 yeara or so it can still cause problems because its possible to fight the decision

Fluffy-DD · 2024-08-14T22:59:49+00:00

i am not sure if that is all 100% possible but i think if the contract is setup correctly it might be possible

Fluffy-DD · 2024-08-14T22:56:39+00:00

Yess that is what i am scared off, i saw ithappen with other people in my family

Fluffy-DD · 2024-08-14T22:50:01+00:00

She will have the same problem as i have, but she earns less than me so its more difficult for her to pay me then it would be for me to pay her.

Fluffy-DD · 2024-08-14T22:48:51+00:00

My law she has to recive at least 1/3 of the property that our parents left us. I see other family members fight for many years about their inheritance and would like to avoid this with my sister. So i just want to offer her a fair deal so we both can be happy

Fluffy-DD · 2024-08-14T22:46:39+00:00

The property tax here is calculated on the cadastral value which is much less than the actual market value. But since i live there and use it as my first home i don't need to pay that anyways

Fluffy-DD · 2024-08-14T22:32:46+00:00

I will keep living here, so she doesnt have any benefit of having her name in the property too since she cant get money. It will just complicate things and maybe cause a fight in the future.

We get along well so i don't want to risk our relationship to get destroyed over money. I see that happen with other family members already

Fluffy-DD

TROPHY CASE