Soldato
Since i've mentioned in pretty much every thread i post in these days about this move, i thought i might create a thread. If for nothing more than a diary of all the crap i have to put up with and try and make decisions by writing them than anything else!
Back Story
My parents bought a place in Spain just north of Benidorm in a coastal town called Moraira around 1999, as such i spent quite a bit of time there during school holidays. They used it as a holiday home for around 15 years before spending more and more time over there and finally becoming resident just before Brexit. They now only head back to the UK once a year for a couple weeks to see family/friends.
My wife and i have always had the idea of retiring to Spain, however that being at least 20 years away was always a bit of a pipedream. Enter Covid and remote working. My wife had worked remotely for a few years due to illness, however i'd always been office based. A shift to home based work meant we could consider moving over and working from Spain. In around September 2021 we spent 2 weeks there and confirmed it was the life for us, came home and approached our companies (i'd only been in my current job for 5 months at the point of raising this!) The plan was to target May 2024 as the move date due to my wifes daughter doing an AAT apprenticeship and us agreeing to support her during that.
We also needed to apply for my wife to become an Irish Citizen through descent. This can take up to 2 years but was needed so we could move/work there.
September 2022 we went back for 2 weeks, and spent 10 days driving up the coast checking out different areas. Whilst it's lovely where my parents are, it's very touristy during the holidays which gets unbearable. It's also very expensive and the houses are close together. I always insisted i wanted the feeling of space around the property with mountain/sea views from my patio rather than staring at a fence/hedge.
The first day took us ~30 minutes inland to a town called Orba, nestled at the end of a valley. It was a lovely place surrounded by orange groves in the floor of the valley and houses dotted on the hills. Views from most properties would be great, it wasn't too big a drive to the coast or my parents and the houses got a little bigger/more land for our budget.
We then continued up towards Valencia stopping off at Xativa (very inland), Cullera (coastal), Valencia (big city), Castellon (city/coastal) and finally Peniscola (hilarious name). Peniscola we had seen on youtube and it looked idea, property at a decent price, surrounded by a natural park and close to the beach. However we got there on the day of a Fiesta and it was rammed, then chatting to a few locals it turned out that during peak season it was even busier and winter periods everything shut down. The opposite of what we actually wanted. Seems this is the Cornwall of Spain for the locals from Madrid/Barcelona. We headed back to my parents with our heads buzzing.
Over the next few months we spent most of our time looking at potential houses, joining various expat groups and hoovering up information and setting plans.
I then decided that it made sense to head over for 3 months in March to make sure it worked for us as a proper lifestyle, for our jobs (i deal with a lot of US people so time difference is another hour worse!), and just generally right for us. We opted to stay near to Orba which we visited on the first day in a village called Tormos.
Can just see it to the in the upper Left corner, my parents place in Moraira in on the bottom right coast.
The owners had a big house which was fully separate so we had the ground floor which included the pool/patio areas. The plot was amazing, the second top row of houses, but on a corner so nothing to one side and no-one really above either.
Got greeted with great sunrises, and bright moons
Downside being the sunset the other side of the house and we'd lose the "sun" from around 4pm, it was also a little windy being at the end of the valley it channeled the wind and so got cool out of the sun at times.
I'm a fan of trail running and had trails like this less than 5 minutes from the front door which was amazing.
The valley floor was also full or orange groves, with lots of roads running through for the farmers. You could do a great bike ride through them all stopping off at various bars on the outskirts for food/drinks. We were lucky to be there for the smell of orange blossom which was incredible.
After the initial week or getting stuff set up, we were pretty much convinced the move was right for us. The Valley we were in (Orba Valley) had another valley over a hill called the Jalon Valley (famous for wine) has lots of tiny little villages dotted around, each around 3km from each other so it's nice passing through them all. We pretty much agreed that any of these areas would be perfect and give us what we wanted. There's a town called Pedreguer or Pego which i quite fancied. They were bigger but also at the "entrance" to the Valley so had similar views but was 10 minutes closer to the beach.
My initial plans were to work UK hours, so 9:30-6:00 in Spain. However, i'm rubbish at sitting around, so i'd wake up at 8ish, then just fidget for 90 minutes unable to relax before work. I need to get better at that and maybe try running at that time. After a week i switched to 9am - 5:30 which worked a little better for me. By the time i got up, took the dog out, made coffee and sat and drank it reading the BBC it wasn't usually far off 9am.
We pretty much spent our days working as normal. Then finishing up, maybe having a bit of a walk/bike ride, then tea and ending up watching tv. It was a bit awkward as due to losing the sun, and the outdoor furniture not being very comfortable we didn't sit out in the evenings as much as we'd expected.
I've mentioned elsewhere, but my wife has a chronic disability called M.E/CFS, the journey there wiped her out and took a few weeks to recover from, however once recovered she was definitely better than when we're in the UK. She works part time, so would finish at 2pm and then it was nice for her to be able to sit out for a bit in the sun and read her book or go for a small walk vs the UK where she'd just end up staying on the sofa waiting for me to finish work because the weather isn't nice enough to be outside.
The beach was *just* that bit too far to head to in the evenings at a 35 minute drive each way. We were also limited due to the dog not being allowed on most beaches. Although he was ready for swimming!
(Disclaimer - He can't actually swim, he's too small/heavy so sinks. Although if i held him in the swimming pool he seemed to enjoy the motion. Plan is to buy him a proper float)
On the days he did come to the beach, the stupid idiot enjoyed completely ignoring the shelter we setup for him (ensuring we burnt as we were too busy worrying about him) and proceeding to overheat
The water in the taps is drinkable, however it had an unpleasant taste. We debated buying a Brita filter but never seemed to get around to it. I tried to get her to drink water from the local Fonts but she wasn't a fan. Think the green moss growing nearby put her off!
We ended up splitting the water. She's had supermarket bottles and i'd use this font which was around 2km from the house (I progressed to filling up 5L bottles!)
After a month, i had the superb idea that we should buy a car ready for the permanent move. This would mean one less hassle when we came out and avoid the need to rent something at an hefty cost. My wife, wonderful as she is, gave me felly autonomy on choice. She said we've always had something she wants so i could have something i wanted. I love a convertible, however with a dog and only planned on 1 car. A small 2 seater convertible didn't make sense. My wife also needs an Automatic for the times she drives and enjoys the high up seating position of an SUV. She did however want something "small" due to the narrow streets.
Step up my dream car. A 25yr old 4 litre Jeep Wrangler TJ. My wife was hoping i wouldn't actually buy it given she thinks it's stupid. However it's perfect. Can easily stick a surfboard on the roof, the top comes off on sunny days (which would drip sand from said surfboard onto the passengers as my wife pointed out) and it's footprint is actually smaller than a modern Mini (i would've actually preferred a newer Wrangler JK - However they upped the size considerably). It's also surrounded by rubber bumpers at all arches so even if you drive into something you're not ruining the car!
It's wonderful. Sure it has some flaws, it does around 15mpg, has horrific road noise over 50mph, my wife can barely climb into it and has very little space for luggage if you have the rear seat fitted. However it's perfect and drives incredibly well. I need to do some stuff to it and have just bought a load of stuff to it, but that's for another thread in Motors!)
We agreed whilst we were there not to view any houses, checking them out on their equivalent of Rightmove was fine to get an idea of areas and what was achievable, however the last thing we wanted to do was love something before we were ready to buy. In Spain you put down a 10% deposit which you lose if you don't complete within a set timeframe so it's an expensive risk! This plan was absolutely fine for 11 weeks of the 12 weeks, until i suggested we drive further south of Alicante. We'd previously discounted the area of Murcia/Torrivieja as they always seem very "Bargain Loving Brits Abroad" which we've been keen to avoid. However property is cheap. What would cost €400k near where we were would be ~€250k down there and it's only a 90 minute drive.
The night before we headed down i saw a facebook advert for a house in a town called La Romana. It was spectacular in every way, but after showing the wife, i moved past it as we have with other houses we've seen. We drove down to a place called Catral and then further towards the coast of La Marina. Trying to avoid the bigger seaside towns in the hope of getting something a little more Spanish than the more well known touristy English areas. However having driven through we weren't a fan. It was too flat and felt a bit run down.
My wife had mentioned she was feeling like Chinese and had seen a nice place in a town called Rojales. I completely mis-remembered these and had La Romana in my head from the property and so took us to the wrong place. We pulled up at a tiny little Spanish town inland from Alicante in a place called the Hondon Valley. It had a great feel, really spanish with only around 2000 residents. At this point we discovered my mistake but said we'd drive around the outskirts to try and see the house from the outside. We pulled up google earth to try and find it and failed. At this point i rang the estate agents for an address. The problem in Spain is everyone is secretive. Properties stay empty as many are holiday homes so are at risk of break ins, and there's no agreements between agents so they're scared of getting poached. As such they mentioned they were local and could meet us there in 10 minutes for a proper viewing. Whilst this went against everything we said we would do, we went for it.
It was a huge mistake. The house was genuinely perfect. I've posted it in TIAM previously and we drove home talking about plans for if we lived there. Got back to our apartment and set about looking at ways to make it a viable option. We could afford the initial 10% deposit, but with our UK house not yet even up for sale there was no idea when we'd be able to proceed. I looked into whether we could get a mortgage anyway and just struggle to pay both side by side in the short term but the mortgage lenders in Spain needed proof our UK one was paid up. In the end someone snapped it up above asking price and we were left cursing ourselves for even looking! Youtube for the house below. It was somehow even better in real life.
www.youtube.com
This has re-evaluated what we want though. Whilst the views i posted above from Tormos were nice. There's still a housing estate feel to it and the neighbour noise associated to it. The above house is surrounded by olive groves/fields and there's a rule in the area where to build a house, you need a plot of around 10000sq ft and can only build on a certain percentage so it ensures it's never going to be too built up. We've since seen a few houses in this valley and whilst not quite as nice and not with a cave house to renovate, something i'd love. They could be made as nice over time.
The time came to head back home and whilst disappointed, it was an exciting time because we has resolve to get home, sell and be back by November 23 (Our daughter decided to drop out of her AAT after level 3 and not finish the final year so was working full time). We drove back a different route and added on an extra day. The journey down was long and really took it out of my wife, and with the weather being nice, it was going to be nice to spend more time in places along the way. We went up the West coast of France stopping at Saint-Jean de la Luz, La Rochelle and Calais. It was a much more pleasant with only 5-6 hours driving each day.
Back home we set about decorating and tidying up the mess the adult kids had made whilst we were away and got the house advertised. It sold after 3 weeks and we're now targeting the end of September for completion (no chain either side so hopefully be straight forward). I've been clearing out loads of stuff and telling the wife we'll have limited space. However i've also added to our stuff by buying various large things for the Jeep (soft top roof and front seats)
The plan is to rent for ~6 months whilst we find somewhere to buy. We didn't want to buy anything till we had the money in the bank ready to move, however i have started an application for a mortgage in principle. The downside is Spain has very high taxes, and so Stamp Duty is around 10% and then solicitor/notary fees are around 3% on top. So you have to add around 13% of costs on top. Combined with Non Spanish Tax residents only being able to get a mortgage for 70% max LTV and this dropping to 60% when looking at rural properties. This means the potential house value is lower than we'd be able to afford as we need a big chunk for fees taking away from our deposit.
One thing i've not settled on yet is where to rent. The sensible thing is to aim around the Valley we like. However, property gets very cheap down towards Almeria/Mojacar further south. The negatives being that it gets hotter and windier down that way and with the recent heat waves likely getting more common, this could make things unpleasant. Benefits being you have lots on your doorsetp. The Sierra Nevada mountain range is huge, whilst still being close to the beach. Could have both within 30 minutes drive!
The other option would be to explore further north near Girona, just south of the Pyrenees. Again the benefits being near some big mountains, whilst also getting a much cooler climate. Even in summer it rarely averages above 30C which could be great as climates get hotter. However looking last night, it's really expensive, and the houses we could afford wouldn't come with the space we want. A lot also don't have private swimming pools which we want. I'm sure there will be properties which suit, if we gave it the chance though.
Anyway this is pretty much where we are now. This afternoon i'm going to buy a van with the plan to drive our stuff over and sell it once we're there. Will likely put all our stuff in storage. Not sure my parents can deal with any more of our stuff at their house. The ferry is booked for the 1st October.
We're a bit in limbo, there's not much point packing things up yet as it's 8 weeks till we move, but at the same time it feels we have loads to do and sort out. Just nothing can really be done at this stage.
We've got our NIE, which is a foreigner identity number. My wife is an Irish citizen now. So we just need to get over there, my wife gets her residency which is straight forward being an EU citizen, then i apply as the spouse of an EU citizen and get all the same benefits/rights as an EU citizen. I'm basically reliant on her and she makes a point of removing her wedding ring whenever i annoy her!
Work wise. The plan is for her to become Self Employed and invoice her business. She also gets a disability benefit which it looks like she's still entitled to, however this will be taxed in Spain. Self Employed people get stung quite a bit in Spain and it's not like the UK. You basically pay a fee every month for your Social Security contributions regardless of your income. So her effective rate of tax will go from about 5 % in the UK (due to part time working and having the 12.5k personal allowance and no tax on benefits), to about 28% in Spain. The benefit being that she won't need to pay for health insurance as many other EU citizens do. Given her health conditions this would likely be expensive.
Once i've got my residency, my plan is to transfer my contract to a Spanish company within our wider business. They'll likely charge a 5% intercompany fee and i think the employer cost of employment is higher so unsure entirely what effect this will have on my salary. I have a meeting with my boss and the CFO next week to discuss. The other option would be for me to also become self employed in Spain and invoice my company in the UK. However it would be good to be properly employed for mortgage purposes etc.
This is pretty much where we're at now. A bit of limbo until we get over there and things start flying thick and fast!
Any opinions on either Almeria are or further up towards Girona would be greatly appreciated!
Until then, i look forward to this being my life again!
Back Story
My parents bought a place in Spain just north of Benidorm in a coastal town called Moraira around 1999, as such i spent quite a bit of time there during school holidays. They used it as a holiday home for around 15 years before spending more and more time over there and finally becoming resident just before Brexit. They now only head back to the UK once a year for a couple weeks to see family/friends.
My wife and i have always had the idea of retiring to Spain, however that being at least 20 years away was always a bit of a pipedream. Enter Covid and remote working. My wife had worked remotely for a few years due to illness, however i'd always been office based. A shift to home based work meant we could consider moving over and working from Spain. In around September 2021 we spent 2 weeks there and confirmed it was the life for us, came home and approached our companies (i'd only been in my current job for 5 months at the point of raising this!) The plan was to target May 2024 as the move date due to my wifes daughter doing an AAT apprenticeship and us agreeing to support her during that.
We also needed to apply for my wife to become an Irish Citizen through descent. This can take up to 2 years but was needed so we could move/work there.
September 2022 we went back for 2 weeks, and spent 10 days driving up the coast checking out different areas. Whilst it's lovely where my parents are, it's very touristy during the holidays which gets unbearable. It's also very expensive and the houses are close together. I always insisted i wanted the feeling of space around the property with mountain/sea views from my patio rather than staring at a fence/hedge.
The first day took us ~30 minutes inland to a town called Orba, nestled at the end of a valley. It was a lovely place surrounded by orange groves in the floor of the valley and houses dotted on the hills. Views from most properties would be great, it wasn't too big a drive to the coast or my parents and the houses got a little bigger/more land for our budget.
We then continued up towards Valencia stopping off at Xativa (very inland), Cullera (coastal), Valencia (big city), Castellon (city/coastal) and finally Peniscola (hilarious name). Peniscola we had seen on youtube and it looked idea, property at a decent price, surrounded by a natural park and close to the beach. However we got there on the day of a Fiesta and it was rammed, then chatting to a few locals it turned out that during peak season it was even busier and winter periods everything shut down. The opposite of what we actually wanted. Seems this is the Cornwall of Spain for the locals from Madrid/Barcelona. We headed back to my parents with our heads buzzing.
Over the next few months we spent most of our time looking at potential houses, joining various expat groups and hoovering up information and setting plans.
I then decided that it made sense to head over for 3 months in March to make sure it worked for us as a proper lifestyle, for our jobs (i deal with a lot of US people so time difference is another hour worse!), and just generally right for us. We opted to stay near to Orba which we visited on the first day in a village called Tormos.
Can just see it to the in the upper Left corner, my parents place in Moraira in on the bottom right coast.
The owners had a big house which was fully separate so we had the ground floor which included the pool/patio areas. The plot was amazing, the second top row of houses, but on a corner so nothing to one side and no-one really above either.
Got greeted with great sunrises, and bright moons
Downside being the sunset the other side of the house and we'd lose the "sun" from around 4pm, it was also a little windy being at the end of the valley it channeled the wind and so got cool out of the sun at times.
I'm a fan of trail running and had trails like this less than 5 minutes from the front door which was amazing.
The valley floor was also full or orange groves, with lots of roads running through for the farmers. You could do a great bike ride through them all stopping off at various bars on the outskirts for food/drinks. We were lucky to be there for the smell of orange blossom which was incredible.
After the initial week or getting stuff set up, we were pretty much convinced the move was right for us. The Valley we were in (Orba Valley) had another valley over a hill called the Jalon Valley (famous for wine) has lots of tiny little villages dotted around, each around 3km from each other so it's nice passing through them all. We pretty much agreed that any of these areas would be perfect and give us what we wanted. There's a town called Pedreguer or Pego which i quite fancied. They were bigger but also at the "entrance" to the Valley so had similar views but was 10 minutes closer to the beach.
My initial plans were to work UK hours, so 9:30-6:00 in Spain. However, i'm rubbish at sitting around, so i'd wake up at 8ish, then just fidget for 90 minutes unable to relax before work. I need to get better at that and maybe try running at that time. After a week i switched to 9am - 5:30 which worked a little better for me. By the time i got up, took the dog out, made coffee and sat and drank it reading the BBC it wasn't usually far off 9am.
We pretty much spent our days working as normal. Then finishing up, maybe having a bit of a walk/bike ride, then tea and ending up watching tv. It was a bit awkward as due to losing the sun, and the outdoor furniture not being very comfortable we didn't sit out in the evenings as much as we'd expected.
I've mentioned elsewhere, but my wife has a chronic disability called M.E/CFS, the journey there wiped her out and took a few weeks to recover from, however once recovered she was definitely better than when we're in the UK. She works part time, so would finish at 2pm and then it was nice for her to be able to sit out for a bit in the sun and read her book or go for a small walk vs the UK where she'd just end up staying on the sofa waiting for me to finish work because the weather isn't nice enough to be outside.
The beach was *just* that bit too far to head to in the evenings at a 35 minute drive each way. We were also limited due to the dog not being allowed on most beaches. Although he was ready for swimming!
(Disclaimer - He can't actually swim, he's too small/heavy so sinks. Although if i held him in the swimming pool he seemed to enjoy the motion. Plan is to buy him a proper float)
On the days he did come to the beach, the stupid idiot enjoyed completely ignoring the shelter we setup for him (ensuring we burnt as we were too busy worrying about him) and proceeding to overheat
The water in the taps is drinkable, however it had an unpleasant taste. We debated buying a Brita filter but never seemed to get around to it. I tried to get her to drink water from the local Fonts but she wasn't a fan. Think the green moss growing nearby put her off!
We ended up splitting the water. She's had supermarket bottles and i'd use this font which was around 2km from the house (I progressed to filling up 5L bottles!)
After a month, i had the superb idea that we should buy a car ready for the permanent move. This would mean one less hassle when we came out and avoid the need to rent something at an hefty cost. My wife, wonderful as she is, gave me felly autonomy on choice. She said we've always had something she wants so i could have something i wanted. I love a convertible, however with a dog and only planned on 1 car. A small 2 seater convertible didn't make sense. My wife also needs an Automatic for the times she drives and enjoys the high up seating position of an SUV. She did however want something "small" due to the narrow streets.
Step up my dream car. A 25yr old 4 litre Jeep Wrangler TJ. My wife was hoping i wouldn't actually buy it given she thinks it's stupid. However it's perfect. Can easily stick a surfboard on the roof, the top comes off on sunny days (which would drip sand from said surfboard onto the passengers as my wife pointed out) and it's footprint is actually smaller than a modern Mini (i would've actually preferred a newer Wrangler JK - However they upped the size considerably). It's also surrounded by rubber bumpers at all arches so even if you drive into something you're not ruining the car!
It's wonderful. Sure it has some flaws, it does around 15mpg, has horrific road noise over 50mph, my wife can barely climb into it and has very little space for luggage if you have the rear seat fitted. However it's perfect and drives incredibly well. I need to do some stuff to it and have just bought a load of stuff to it, but that's for another thread in Motors!)
We agreed whilst we were there not to view any houses, checking them out on their equivalent of Rightmove was fine to get an idea of areas and what was achievable, however the last thing we wanted to do was love something before we were ready to buy. In Spain you put down a 10% deposit which you lose if you don't complete within a set timeframe so it's an expensive risk! This plan was absolutely fine for 11 weeks of the 12 weeks, until i suggested we drive further south of Alicante. We'd previously discounted the area of Murcia/Torrivieja as they always seem very "Bargain Loving Brits Abroad" which we've been keen to avoid. However property is cheap. What would cost €400k near where we were would be ~€250k down there and it's only a 90 minute drive.
The night before we headed down i saw a facebook advert for a house in a town called La Romana. It was spectacular in every way, but after showing the wife, i moved past it as we have with other houses we've seen. We drove down to a place called Catral and then further towards the coast of La Marina. Trying to avoid the bigger seaside towns in the hope of getting something a little more Spanish than the more well known touristy English areas. However having driven through we weren't a fan. It was too flat and felt a bit run down.
My wife had mentioned she was feeling like Chinese and had seen a nice place in a town called Rojales. I completely mis-remembered these and had La Romana in my head from the property and so took us to the wrong place. We pulled up at a tiny little Spanish town inland from Alicante in a place called the Hondon Valley. It had a great feel, really spanish with only around 2000 residents. At this point we discovered my mistake but said we'd drive around the outskirts to try and see the house from the outside. We pulled up google earth to try and find it and failed. At this point i rang the estate agents for an address. The problem in Spain is everyone is secretive. Properties stay empty as many are holiday homes so are at risk of break ins, and there's no agreements between agents so they're scared of getting poached. As such they mentioned they were local and could meet us there in 10 minutes for a proper viewing. Whilst this went against everything we said we would do, we went for it.
It was a huge mistake. The house was genuinely perfect. I've posted it in TIAM previously and we drove home talking about plans for if we lived there. Got back to our apartment and set about looking at ways to make it a viable option. We could afford the initial 10% deposit, but with our UK house not yet even up for sale there was no idea when we'd be able to proceed. I looked into whether we could get a mortgage anyway and just struggle to pay both side by side in the short term but the mortgage lenders in Spain needed proof our UK one was paid up. In the end someone snapped it up above asking price and we were left cursing ourselves for even looking! Youtube for the house below. It was somehow even better in real life.
TEL 642332236 3 Bedroom Villa with Large Plot in La Romana, contact www.villas4spain.com 642927003
Listing: https://villas4spain.com/en/detached-villas/v4s1753-villa-la-romana-1753We have the pleasure in advertising this 4 bedroom Villa in La Romana which ...
www.youtube.com
This has re-evaluated what we want though. Whilst the views i posted above from Tormos were nice. There's still a housing estate feel to it and the neighbour noise associated to it. The above house is surrounded by olive groves/fields and there's a rule in the area where to build a house, you need a plot of around 10000sq ft and can only build on a certain percentage so it ensures it's never going to be too built up. We've since seen a few houses in this valley and whilst not quite as nice and not with a cave house to renovate, something i'd love. They could be made as nice over time.
The time came to head back home and whilst disappointed, it was an exciting time because we has resolve to get home, sell and be back by November 23 (Our daughter decided to drop out of her AAT after level 3 and not finish the final year so was working full time). We drove back a different route and added on an extra day. The journey down was long and really took it out of my wife, and with the weather being nice, it was going to be nice to spend more time in places along the way. We went up the West coast of France stopping at Saint-Jean de la Luz, La Rochelle and Calais. It was a much more pleasant with only 5-6 hours driving each day.
Back home we set about decorating and tidying up the mess the adult kids had made whilst we were away and got the house advertised. It sold after 3 weeks and we're now targeting the end of September for completion (no chain either side so hopefully be straight forward). I've been clearing out loads of stuff and telling the wife we'll have limited space. However i've also added to our stuff by buying various large things for the Jeep (soft top roof and front seats)
The plan is to rent for ~6 months whilst we find somewhere to buy. We didn't want to buy anything till we had the money in the bank ready to move, however i have started an application for a mortgage in principle. The downside is Spain has very high taxes, and so Stamp Duty is around 10% and then solicitor/notary fees are around 3% on top. So you have to add around 13% of costs on top. Combined with Non Spanish Tax residents only being able to get a mortgage for 70% max LTV and this dropping to 60% when looking at rural properties. This means the potential house value is lower than we'd be able to afford as we need a big chunk for fees taking away from our deposit.
One thing i've not settled on yet is where to rent. The sensible thing is to aim around the Valley we like. However, property gets very cheap down towards Almeria/Mojacar further south. The negatives being that it gets hotter and windier down that way and with the recent heat waves likely getting more common, this could make things unpleasant. Benefits being you have lots on your doorsetp. The Sierra Nevada mountain range is huge, whilst still being close to the beach. Could have both within 30 minutes drive!
The other option would be to explore further north near Girona, just south of the Pyrenees. Again the benefits being near some big mountains, whilst also getting a much cooler climate. Even in summer it rarely averages above 30C which could be great as climates get hotter. However looking last night, it's really expensive, and the houses we could afford wouldn't come with the space we want. A lot also don't have private swimming pools which we want. I'm sure there will be properties which suit, if we gave it the chance though.
Anyway this is pretty much where we are now. This afternoon i'm going to buy a van with the plan to drive our stuff over and sell it once we're there. Will likely put all our stuff in storage. Not sure my parents can deal with any more of our stuff at their house. The ferry is booked for the 1st October.
We're a bit in limbo, there's not much point packing things up yet as it's 8 weeks till we move, but at the same time it feels we have loads to do and sort out. Just nothing can really be done at this stage.
We've got our NIE, which is a foreigner identity number. My wife is an Irish citizen now. So we just need to get over there, my wife gets her residency which is straight forward being an EU citizen, then i apply as the spouse of an EU citizen and get all the same benefits/rights as an EU citizen. I'm basically reliant on her and she makes a point of removing her wedding ring whenever i annoy her!
Work wise. The plan is for her to become Self Employed and invoice her business. She also gets a disability benefit which it looks like she's still entitled to, however this will be taxed in Spain. Self Employed people get stung quite a bit in Spain and it's not like the UK. You basically pay a fee every month for your Social Security contributions regardless of your income. So her effective rate of tax will go from about 5 % in the UK (due to part time working and having the 12.5k personal allowance and no tax on benefits), to about 28% in Spain. The benefit being that she won't need to pay for health insurance as many other EU citizens do. Given her health conditions this would likely be expensive.
Once i've got my residency, my plan is to transfer my contract to a Spanish company within our wider business. They'll likely charge a 5% intercompany fee and i think the employer cost of employment is higher so unsure entirely what effect this will have on my salary. I have a meeting with my boss and the CFO next week to discuss. The other option would be for me to also become self employed in Spain and invoice my company in the UK. However it would be good to be properly employed for mortgage purposes etc.
This is pretty much where we're at now. A bit of limbo until we get over there and things start flying thick and fast!
Any opinions on either Almeria are or further up towards Girona would be greatly appreciated!
Until then, i look forward to this being my life again!
