Croatia is the next hot spot when it comes to tracking down affordable holiday homes, according to A Place In The Sun presenter Amanda Lamb. Presumably, it will be the next port of callfor C4 cameras which have helped to encourage Brits to invest in plenty of Euro sun. Steve Pratt reports.

FORMER model and estate agent Amanda Lamb travels the world helping people find their dream house abroad. But the presenter of C4's A Place In The Sun and its spin-off, My Place In The Sun, doesn't own any property abroad herself.

"I do toy with the idea of buying, but I'm never in one country long enough," says Lamb, who's also been the face of the Scottish Widows advertisements for the past decade.

"Trying to buy a property, whether in England or abroad, is quite a long process, and I'm never anywhere for long enough to sort it all out."

Having said that, before the interview she'd just been for a walk to a place called Dinard - she was in Brittany - and quite fancied the idea of a little apartment overlooking the sea. "We'll have to wait and see," she says.

She's become a bit of an expert at overseas property as, for every show she films, she sees the four houses featured, plus a number of others that make the shortlist drawn up by the director and associate producer. They're narrowed down with the help of Lamb's expert eye.

That means she sees at least 200 overseas properties a year. She agrees the temptation to buy one must be strong, and reckons it crosses her mind every two or three weeks. "There was a beautiful one in Normandy a couple of years ago that really sticks out," she says.

"It was an old, thatched cottage, on the market for about £40,000, though it's probably worth double that by now. It was just beautiful, absolutely stunning, and I would've bought that, definitely, if the house hunters hadn't bought it. I thought it probably wasn't the done thing to gazump them.

"I can remember doing the final review with them, and thinking, 'please go for number two, please go for number two'. They went for number four, and I was gutted."

Some might think she has no need of a home as her job as a TV estate agent has seen her make 12 daytime and 16 primetime shows in the past year which means she's been away more or less solidly since May.

"I think I've spent about 20 days in my own bed in that time," says Lamb. "So yes, there's always the beaches, or sitting in beautiful locations, but I'm also often found sitting in airport lounges or combating jetlag."

Four series of A Place In The Sun have taken her around the world looking at des res abroad. She's knows the property market, having worked as an estate agent for three years before becoming a model.

"I was modelling for seven years, and my agency had been suggesting that I should think about going into presenting," she recalls. "When they were looking for a presenter of A Place In The Sun, it turned out they were looking for someone who had estate agency experience, which was perfect. It was great, because it made use of my experience as an estate agent."

Her former life selling houses and flats in Portsmouth was less glamorous than the ones she deals with on TV. Like the property, owned by a man who lived in London, that had been on the books of her agency, and several others, for months and months.

"The guy used it at weekends, and basically just trashed the joint. All of his mates would go on pub crawls on a Friday night, and then back to his. If we ever had a viewing on a Saturday, it was always a nightmare," she recalls.

"I'd gone round there one Saturday, and it was in a real state. The bed wasn't made, there were dirty dishes in the sink, and it just smelled of beer and curry and everything.

"So I ran around and cleaned it all up in the 20 minutes before the client arrived. I must have made it look all right because on the Monday they phoned and put in an offer."

When Lamb phoned the owner to tell him, she got a shock - he said he'd sold it three months earlier through another estate agent.

"I don't know who'd bought it but they'd obviously gone shopping or something, and when they got back, their entire house had been cleaned up, the dishes had been washed, and their bed made. "They'll probably never know what had happened. To this day, I should think they're still wondering," she says.

A Place In The Sun regularly attracts some 3.5 million viewers, spawning a spin-off and a magazine, which is being launched this month. The popularity of such programmes shouldn't be surprising as Britons are buying property abroad in record numbers. As far as she's concerned, the best bargains at the moment are in Croatia. Property is a really good investment there. "It's an amazing country, and you can still get really good bargains there," she says. "It's set to join the EU in four years time, which would further boost the market there. It'll definitely go up, but right now it's an ideal time to buy there. And it's such a beautiful country, absolutely breathtaking."

* A Place In The Sun: Thursday, C4, 8pm

My Place In The Sun, Monday to Friday, C4, 4pm

Published: ??/??/2003