We own a holiday house, we bought it about 4 or 5 years ago. It is about 5-6 hours from where we live, which is really too far but the town is very special to me as my family owned a holiday house there when I was growing up. (That house was sold about 20 years ago after about 60 years in the family... long, sad story!) I have wonderful memories of family holidays there and I wanted the same for my own kids.

The pros are pretty straight forward - we have a beautiful place to holiday whenever we want to. We don't have to worry about booking accommodation or the cost of it. The kids are familiar with the house and the town and love going there. We don't have to pack anything as the house is set up with all we need, including clothes. We can take our pets with us.

The cons - apart from the initial cost of purchasing the property, don't forget the cost of furnishing it... everything from beds to saucepans and whitegoods. Ebay is great for furniture if you are happy to buy second hand stuff. (Beds I bought new!) Then there are the ongoing costs; even if you don't spend much time there, you will still pay for the service connections of gas, electricity and water. We pay someone to come and mow the lawns and maintain the gardens as we can't guarantee that we will be there to do it ourselves, and who wants to spend their holidays mowing lawns anyway! Don't forget home and contents insurance, which is quite expensive.

Apart from the costs, there are other cons. We feel guilty if we haven't been to the house in a while as it seems such a waste to have it just sitting there. DH also struggles to book a holiday anywhere else, partly because he loves it there and partly because spending money to go elsewhere seems like a waste to him. Family think that they have every right to use the house whenever they want and at no cost. I am happy for some of my family to use it, but there are a couple of members of my family who have no respect for anyone else's belongings and have stayed and left the damaged and dirty. This has caused some fairly big issues when we have said 'no' next time they have asked to use the house. Although we take our pets, I am not keen on other people taking their un-toilet trained pets - particularly when those toileting accidents are left for a couple of months and ruin the carpet I paid an obscene amount of money for due to the 'remote' location of the house. Yes, we have had some issues with family! We don't rent the house out, it is purely for personal use, so this makes it easier to refuse when friends ask to 'borrow' the house. And every second person asks!

We purchased the house with the intention of never selling it, our plan is to hand the house down to our children and they can hand it down to theirs. Although the house has created some unforeseen issues, particularly with my sister, we have no regrets.