Over the past six months or so PrimeLocation.com has been researching which sunny European second homes destinations –  including Turkey – are the best places from a rational, fact-based point of view, to own a property.

Most people fall in love with an area first and later decide to buy as they become familiar with its customs, architecture, language and locals. But this is an irrational and ‘heart over head’ approach because – for example, what happens if the weather’s horrible outside the summer season?

So we’ve been looking around at the different principles that make for holiday or second home happiness. We’ve examined meteorological records to find the warmest, sunniest and driest destinations but also where house prices are the most affordable, the beaches are the least spoilt, local airports are the most numerous and reliable and where the legal buying process can be said to be the most robust. The only measure we didn’t include is crime – information on which is hard to come by.

Hot spot
The warmest, with an average upper daily maximum temperature of 34 deg centigrade, is Spain’s Costa de la Luz – the most southerly – although it has high average rainfall and some of Spain’s highest house prices.

Sunshine
Sunniest is Cyprus, where on average the sun beats down for 12 hours a day and the driest is the Greek island of Crete, which has just 6mm of rain on average during the main summer  months. The island also contains some of Europe’s most affordable holiday homes which sell for an average of £140,700, explained in part because it’s on a limb somewhat and which it’s difficult to reach from the UK direct during the low season.

Beaches
If you love your beaches to a high standard then Spain’s Costa Blanca is the place to buy, as its coastline harbours some 104 European Blue Flag beaches, a surprise to some who view the costa poorly based on the rowdy reputations of Benidorm and Alicante.

Legal system
Legally speaking Cyprus is the best spot if you want watertight home buying legislation. Modelled loosely on our own Land Registry and enforced relatively strictly, it outshines Spain and arguably even France even if it can be painfully slow sometimes.

Airports
If a reliable air route there and back is a must-have, then Spain’s Costa del Sol is the airline hub in Europe. Its resorts are served by up to six airports (Malaga, Cordoba, Seville, Almeria, Granada and Gibraltar) and in the high season over 50 flights wing their way to their busy runways on changeover days, hardly surprising given some 15 million of us enjoy a holiday there each year.

The No.1?
But if you roll all this up  and the pick the one country that offers the best balance of all these features is Cyprus. No place is perfect of course and the island has its problems as well as allures. It is frequently dogged by water shortages, the island remains split in half by the 1974 war and a poorly regulated mortgage market recently came back to haunt its developers following a well-publicised scandal.

If you think London is a teeming mass of cars and humanity close to bursting then spare a thought for the residents of Shanghai, the world’s largest city with a population of 23 million.

To cope a network of nine new towns have been built – or are planned – around Shanghai. But in a bizarre move many of them have been built to closely ape European architectural styles.

Four have been completed thus far including Anting, Songjiang, Luodian and Gaoqiao although overall the new ‘villages’ will ultimately hold approximately 50,000 residents. So far the completed developments are to the north and west of Shanghai’s brazenly vibrant and wealthy central zones, which have been enriched in recent years as the city has become the gateway to and port for China’s piping hot economy.

Genteel streets: Songjian in China copies the English style

European visitors to Shanghai can book up for tours to stare at the incongruous buildings set among the mangle of modern Shanghai. Most curious for British visitors is Songjian, 34 miles south west of the city centre that’s architecturally a carbon copy of St Albans or maybe Marlow.

Dead ringer: a street in Songjian complete with its own red telephone box.

Called ‘Thames Town’ by the Chinese, Songjian is by a river – the Yangtse – and has been built with many elements of an English country town including a large Victorian church, several pubs including the Rock Point Inn and several red telephone boxes.

If you hanker after other architectural styles then try Anting, an unusual German pastiche town filled with Weisbier bars, statues of austere looking burghers and raked roofs. Or drop by on Luodian, a small smorgasboard of Sweden or Gaoqiao, which has a distinctly Dutch flavour including huge model clogs scattered around its streets. Most bizarre of all is a mini Paris that has been built in Tianucheng on the outskirts of Hangzhou, 168 kilometres SW of Shanghai. It features a quarter-size replica of the Eiffel Tower at its centre.

The Chinoise way: a replica of Paris Tianucheng on the outskirts of Hangzhou, 168 kilometres SW of Shanghai

But there is one catch to this odd rash of counterfeit towns circling Shanghai; they are largely empty. Like many ideas forged from the crucible of a centrally coordinated command economy, they has bombed with their intended residents. Songjian is now a favoured picturesque backdrop for China’s upwardly mobile to get married in, but otherwise many of each town’s homes stand empty.

A brick-by-brick copy of an Austrian lakeside town in Guangdong Provice, near Hong Kong.

This failure has not put Chinese developers off having a go at European towns. The latest project to be completed is in Boluo, Guangdong Provice close to Hong Kong. It’s a brick-by-brick replica of the Austrian lakeside town of Hallstatt.

Twinning is unlikely – residents of the conservative southern Austrian town are said to ‘incensed’ at the cheap copying of their home town.

Combining high-end glamour with down-to-earth accessibility, it’s no surprise New York City’s TriBeCa neighbourhood is a magnet for celebrities, including Robert De Niro, Tyra Banks, Jay Z and Beyonce and Meryl Streep who all call this tucked away corner of lower Manhattan home.

Now there’s a chance to own a home in New York City and buy into this enviable Big Apple lifestyle, with news that Michael Imperioli, best known for playing Christopher Moltisanti in Emmy-award winning series The Sopranos has put his TriBeCa home of 20 years on the market.

The four-storey home for sale, with retail premises on the ground floor, is being sold through Sotheby’s International Realty for £3.8 million.

It’s a large bright, spacious cast iron building dating from 1872. The home, which is decorated in a luxurious Venetian Palazzo style has four bedrooms, three bathrooms and the piece de resistance – a large wooden decked terrace on the roof.

What’s not to like? As Imperioli might have said during his Soprano days.

Long awaited changes to Cypriot property law aimed at similutating sales of new homes in Cyprus are finally in place.

The changes, which either abolish or reduce property transfer fees (depending on whether you are paying VAT on your purchase) came into effect on December 2, 2011 and will remain in force for a period of six months.

To benefit, the property must be new and the contract must be dated and concluded before June 2012.

Essentially, if you pay VAT on your house purchase, you’ll pay no transfer fee at all and if you are eligible to pay VAT on your purchase, your property transfer fee will will be reduced by 50 per cent.

Richard Way, of the Overseas Guides Company says it’s hoped the Cypriot tax initiative will kick start the property market in the face of growing financial uncertainty across Europe.

“Now that a favourable decision over transfer tax has been announced, buyers who had been waiting in the wings for confirmation will now be happy to commit to a purchase, thereby injecting some life into the depressed Cyprus property market,” Way says.

Whether things run as smoothly as that remains to be seen, but this does seem to be a step in the right direction for a property market that’s had its fair share of struggles over the past years.

Many properties are said to be the world’s most expensive. There’s the mansion in Surrey for sale at £73m, or the £130m paid for an apartment overlooking Hyde Park in London recently.

But nothing comes near the price of a house being built in the Swiss mountains and claimed by its designer to be worth £7.5 billion and no, we don’t mean £75 or £750 million. It’s not location or size that cranks up the value of this mountain hideaway, said to be in the near the Italian border, but rather its fixtures and fittings designed by Liverpool-based gold plating specialists Stuart Hughes.

He was asked by Swiss luxury home firm exklusivHAUS to create the “world’s most expensive and most unique house ever built”  featuring 200,000 kilograms of solid gold and platinum fixtures and fittings – although it’s not clear where so much gold came from.

Nevertheless, given that gold currently costs £1,150 an ounce it’s not difficult to see how a valuation of £7.5 billion has been achieved.

Mr Hughes is known for coating almost anything in gold from fish tanks to cars – as well as a custom-made 24ct gold iPhone owned by Victoria Beckham. He also recently claimed to have built a £2.8 billion yacht covered in gold for an anonymous Malaysian businessman.

But his most ambitious creation could set the record for most expensive real property. The Swiss chalet is an eight-bedroom home featuring a terrace, large garden, stone wine cellar and a four super-car garage.

And for an added historical interest it features flooring made from meteoric stone with shavings of an original 65 million-year-old T-Rex dinosaur bone embedded in each tile.

All pictures copyright: Stuart Hughes/Rex Features

There’s a reason why one of Spain’s most expensive homes for sale is in Marbella. The Costa del Sol destination is synonymous with luxury and international glamour and is the Spanish equivalent of St Tropez or Monte Carlo. Marbella abounds with multi-million pound yachts, high net-worth individuals and celebrities including Sean Connery and Antonio Banderas.

So it was no surprise when a Marbella property for sale at an eye watering €50 million landed in our inbox. It’s not the average home a Brit looks for in Spain but there is no doubt a market for this exquisite luxury home.

La Casa Lorianna, as it is called, was built in 2002 and sits elevated just above the Golden mile beach. It’s walking distance into town and close to the Marbella Club Hotel, a longstanding favourite with the holidaying elite.

Not that the new owner of La Casa Lorianna would need to be near a hotel – as this home is designed with entertaining in mind and can sleep 20 guests – in suites with their own bathrooms and balconies. And for those seeking some extra privacy there’s a separate guest house and a beach house. Plus there’s separate accommodation for 3-4 staff which is ideal help to look after all those visitors.

The Spanish mansion not only offers the luxury lifestyle of Marbella, it has an enviable quality of life from within its grounds as well. There’s a cinema, health centre with sauna, Turkish bath and gym, a swimming pool – complete with waterfall and grotto and the top floor accommodation is all for the lucky owner with an office, library, his and hers bathrooms, walk in wardrobes, a terrace from which to enjoy the sea view and – in case you fancy the mountain view – a terrace to cover that vista too.

Exclusively available through Fine & Country Spain.

Still struggling to gauge the sheer luxury and expense of this Spanish pad? Check out the video of it below:

Living in Los Angeles, California and being a rising star means the more famous you are the higher up the property ladder you’ll need to climb regardless of actual need. You just have to live somewhere identifiably starry; it’s an easy but expensive way of shouting ‘I’ve made it’ in a city super-obsessed with profile and wealth.

A perfect example of this is Katy Perry and Russell Brand. The oddball couple (she a squeaky clean Popsicle and he a lewd stand-up comedian) originally bought a house on Sunset Strip, outside the limits of Los Angeles, at the foot of the hills that overlook the city.

It’s where famous but not-yet-hyper-wealthy celebrities tend to live and Katy and Russell recently put their 1920s detached house in Los Feliz up for sale at £2.1m. Almost simultaneously they bought a much larger and grown-up £4m mansion in the Hollywood Hills (pictured above and below) where the city’s rich and famous buy when cash is no longer a problem.

Their mansion is an 8,835 sq ft Spanish-style property bought off National Lampoon chief executive Daniel Laikin, who was sentenced to four years in prison recently after being caught manipulating stock prices.

Brand and Perry’s new three story home was built in 1925 and is in off Laurel Canyon Boulevard. It features stained-glass windows, carved fireplace mantel in the living room, a pub, a study and a media room. The house has seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms, including a four-room master suite, two guest suites and staff quarters.

All property pictures © Realtor.com/Rex Features

David Cameron has a growing reputation for his spectacular U-turns while his predecessor Margaret Thatcher famously said ‘this lady’s not for turning’. But in France Nicholas Sarkozy has made one of the most extraordinary and speedy about-turns in France’s political history.

Nicholas Sarkozy: Hisplans to tax non-resident holiday home owners in France have been dropped

After announcing last week that he intended to bring in an additional property tax for absentee holiday home owners in France, Sarkozy backed down following howls of protest from both the 180,000 British ‘second’ home owners in France and a similar number of French ex-pats with properties back in ‘la belle France’.

Although the French parliament and Sarkozy’s cabinet had approved the new tax last week, strong representations from French people living overseas – who will be able to vote in French elections for the first time next year – persuaded Sarkozy not to risk his political capital with this newly enfranchised electorate.

Comments made to French papers also revealed how it had dawned on Sarkozy just how unpopular the move was among Brits who own holiday homes in France, and would lead to demonstrations in the UK the next time he pays a visit.

PrimeLocation had been pondering this pub-quiz question ever since an invite arrived in our inbox last week, beckoning the team to join a select gathering at the Westbury Hotel in Mayfair. 

The RSVP invite mentioned cocktails and canapes and encouraged us to join upmarket Portuguese and Swiss property experts from agent Sotheby’s Realty International. A more unlikely mob is hard to imagine – clipped, tight lipped Swiss suits mixing with louche, heavily tanned ex beach bums.

The reality was very different. An eclectic mix of PRs, accountants and estate agents from London, Europe and even Miami gathered in a small back room of this posh hotel; there were some distinct accents and the odd good sun tan as well as a buzz from the excitement of being in London for the night.

Over Moet & Chandon bubbles and smoked salmon blinis everyone chatted and predictably shared the same view – it’s a must to own a property abroad. And if you can’t choose between the skiing in Switzerland or the sunbathing in Portugal, why not have a property for each season?

So what do one of Europe’s richest countries and one that’s nearly bankrupt have in common and why are we having a party for them? Apart from the obvious sales push from the agents about the luxury resorts and apartments for sale, it was a celebration of their favourable tax regimes; something of a hot topic for London’s big earners at the moment, as the UK’s higher taxes and regulation bear down on them.

John Duggan from PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Portugal office stands up at the end of a small, informal presentation and cliams that it’s not only Switzerland that has all the tax trump cards.

Despite Portugal’s catastrophic government finances at the moment, we are told it’s a great place for foreign buyers to invest – relocating residents enjoy a  10-year tax holiday plus exemption from tax on foreign pensions and exemptions on investment and rental income. At the mention of in-depth tax and finance we began to glaze over but Mr Duggan has promised to write us a guide explaining in more detail how to invest in Portuguese property, so watch this space.

A villa with private pool at the luxury Pine Cliffs Resort in Portugal

As well as the tax benefits, a tanned Artur Simes showed us his model village of his luxury Algarve resort, Pine Cliffs. Having washed down buckets of champagne and too many prawn skewers, we were somewhat impressed and fancied buying one. Simes is walking proof of the 300 days of sunshine the area gets and he claimed a guaranteed five percent return on investment for three years if you want to let out our property through them.

So what about Switzerland? Many a banker knows the benefits of relocating there. It has one of the lowest taxation rates of any western nation and its taxes are based on your expenditure and standard of living rather than income or assets. And if you’re looking for a property to suit the well-off lifestyle, Du Parc - an imposing Belle Epoque mansion, converted from a hotel to luxury apartments, on the shore of Lake Geneva is a great place to start.

Du Parc Kempinski Residences in Switzerland

But the time had come to go home. The last of the Moet bottles had been upended and the warm Spring evening’s air beckoned. Thanks to Sotheby’s International Realty for the hospitaltiy hospitality.

While everyone is talking ad infinitum about the wedding of William and Kate this month, many have forgotten Will’s horse-mad cousin, Zara Phillips, and her July nuptials.

Zara doesn’t seem to mind as she has lots to be excited about besides her lower-key wedding. There’s the 2012 Olympics in London to prepare for (she’s in the Olympic equestrian team) and a newly built villa on the CampoReal Golf Resort and Spa to move in to.

Back in 2009 Phillips bought the land within the 200-acre gated site and began building her villa, largely because she was drawn to CampoReal’s extraordinary equestrian centre (for her) and its 18-hole golf course (for him).

Royal splash: One of the villas at the Campo Real equestrian resort.

The location is ideal for their busy lifestyles because it’s only 30 minutes from Lisbon airport, from which it’s easy to hop back to Bristol, the nearest airport to the couple’s Cotswolds home. The four-bedroom Portuguese villa (with 220sqm of living space) comes with a private swimming pool and was built on the edge of the old vineyards. It will be the Zara’s first home abroad.

The CampoReal Golf Resort and Spa, which opened in 2006 near Turcifal, offers 372 properties with access to the 18hole golf course. This includes villas, town houses, apartments and a five-star hotel. Buyers can sign a freehold leaseback which means they can stay for six weeks of the year and earn rental income from when they’re not there.

Prices range from €250,000 (£219,015) for a one bedroom apartment, €440,000 (£385,500) for the three-bedroom and three bathroom townhouses and €690,000 (£604,600)for the basic premium villa, but there are extra costs and services that can also be added on. Owners and guests will have access to; on-site restaurants, a car and driver, baby sitting, 24 hour room services, swimming pools, laundry services.

Back to school: villa owners at CampoReal can exercise their horses at the resort's huge outdoor arena.

Phillips and Tindall have had to postpone their honeymoon this July because Tindall will be training and playing in the World Cup warm-up game against Wales on August 6th. As the house should be ready before the wedding they are hoping to get away for a pre-wedding honeymoon before July.

The site – founded by Eduardo Netto de Almeida, part of a dynasty of Portuguese horsemen – is not the first equestrian centre to open in Portugal. In 2007 world ranked show jumper and Irish television personality Jessica Kuerten opened an equestrian centre in Quintas de Obidos after noticing the number of top international show jumpers taking their horses to the silver coast of months at a time. The luxurious and exclusive country club and spa has 79 large lakeside homes, with the equestrian centre at the heart of it.