You need to consider whether an Eastern European property not only meets your current needs and aims, but whether it can serve you well in a changing environment.

The most important consideration is undoubtedly - can I resell this property easily?

You may well consider the property as a long-term investment, perhaps towards retirement.

Nevertheless, it is wise to look for properties that you know or at least believe will sell easily, just in case at a later date you need to realise the capital you have tied up in the place.

To protect yourself from changing personal circumstances, look for a property that you know will grow in value at least in line with the market rate, and one that will always be letable and sellable.

But what are the questions you should ask before you buy:

Your investment aims?

It is important to establish, right from the start, what you intend for your investment. Just about the worst thing you can do is go into property buying with only a vague notion of a place being 'a good investment'.

You need instead to be clear what you expect so that you can at least estimate whether a property you have in mind meets your criteria.

In general, your aim will be one of the following:

• You want capital growth (and a holiday home)
• You want rental income (and a holiday home)
• You want to highly leverage your assets and achieve both - so you need a high yield to service a big loan.

Do you want capital growth from a holiday or primary home?

Whether your property is to be used as a holiday home or you are planning to live in it full-time is not nearly as important as the fact that you are not relying on rental income.

From an investment view, this gives you a big advantage. It means you can afford to consider properties in areas where prices have not yet taken off and sit it out until they start to accelerate.

However, even if your plan is for long-term investment, you should still be cautious about being too much of a trailblazer, as we've discussed before.

Do you want rental income and a holiday home?

If this is your aim, and you want to maximise that rental income, then, quite obviously, you are going to have to choose a property in an area with an already established pedigree for rental - in other words, where there is plenty of demand.

If you also want to use the property as a holiday home, then this shouldn't be a problem for you.

But one thing to remember is that if rental income is very important to you, then you need to be guided far more by the market than by your personal preferences.

And, of course, you need to consider the short-term rental market or the holiday rental market. If you want to use the property yourself for a certain amount of time a year, then longer-term lets are out of the question.

Are buying purely as an investment?

In these circumstances you have only two central considerations:

1. Where is property price inflation the fastest?
2. Is there a rental demand for the kind of property I am considering?

You will be looking for a property with potential to rent for the longer-term, most probably in a city, say, for example, Prague or Budapest.

Here you know that property price inflation is likely to be strong, if the two countries in question remain buoyant economically and if the two cities remain central tourist destinations.

Another advantage of sticking to main cities is that maintenance and management of your property is likely to be easier.

You will be able to locate experienced managing agencies and therefore have as little to do with caring for the property as possible.

Here are the most straightforward pure investment methods:

Buy New?

You could buy a new/renovated apartment, rent it out then sell in two to five years time, depending on the precise state of the market.

This is perhaps the easiest option of all. So long as you buy an easily maintained property (preferably an apartment in a large city) and make sure it has good rental value, it's hard to go wrong.

Buy, renovate and rent out?

You could buy an old property, renovate it yourself, rent it out and sell in two to five years time, depending on the precise state of the market.

With this option you certainly stand to make a bigger capital gain than with the first option., However, there is the added complication of having to decide exactly how much to spend on renovation in order to maximise profit.

Also, picking the right property is far more difficult.

Dividing a large property into smaller units is one tried and tested method of increasing the return on an investment.

Buy to renovate and sell on?

Do up an old property and sell it straight away.

This has the advantage of a quick profit and also there is no administrative hassle in dealing with rentals, tenants and management fees.

The other big advantage is that if you get it right, you can do it over and over in a relatively short space of time.

It will work best if you are confident you can:

• Select a bargain of a place to renovate in the right area
• Know precisely how much it will cost to renovate BEFORE buying
• Avoid having all your profit eaten up by the taxes and selling costs - in other words it will work best in countries with low sales taxes and fees

Do any of the above, but outside the capital city?

There is no getting round the fact that, in most cases, investing in secondary cities or areas carries more risk.

But where a market is quite mature (Budapest, Prague, Warsaw, for e.g.), then the returns made by moving to different parts of the country may be greater.