‘Spain is not a paradise and living here is far from problem-free’ but if you keep your head screwed on and are careful every step along the way you can end up with your dream house.
How to Move Safely to Spain by Nick Snelling is an up-to-date, in-depth and comprehensive book about avoiding many of the pitfalls.
Snelling worked as a litigation executive before founding and running a UK construction company. Having worked as a management consultant for two Spanish estate agencies, he knows what the game is in Spain.
Buying property in Spain
Snelling focuses half of the book on the important decisions of what property to buy and where.
When we moved to Spain eight years ago we were told that location was the most important factor. And just as Snelling recommends in his book, we live five minutes away from a small village, 15 minutes away from a large Spanish town and an English estate. We are also 15 minutes from the beach and 25 minutes from Alicante airport (not under the flight path). The good location has made our life here comfortable and we also expect it will be easier to sell our property in the future.
Spanish property market: apartments for sale on the coast
Another important factor that we discovered is differentiating a holiday home with one for permanent living. Not a tenth of our possessions would fit inside the storage spaces of a holiday home and most estates are built as such.
It’s crucial to know that your dream home is legal and the author recommends using bilingual solicitors who are experienced and covered by indemnity insurance. This is a fairly tall order although the author provides the website of one such firm in his book.
While we too used a bilingual solicitor eight years ago, our solicitor omitted to inform us that our property was in a green area where modification was unlikely to be approved.
Similarly, Snelling recommends using structural engineers and gives us a contact details for such a firm. This can prove to be extremely useful as our friends and ourselves included had no luck in finding one when we needed it.
In addition the author gives us a useful website for the Land Registry where you can find information about properties. I have used this and am delighted to confirm that we are indeed the owners of our land.
Other essential information
Snelling also covers many other topics including the Spanish health system, the police forces, schools and education in his book
He also includes a useful list of terms and websites in the book.
Snelling also examines the reasons why relocation sometimes fails, such as the lack of complete agreement between partners, the presence of grandchildren in the UK or failing health. I have found this to be entirely true.
EU Health Insurance Card
This book is perhaps best used as an informative guide to dip into whichever topic interests you most or should you have any questions about moving to Spain.
12 November 2009
Vanessa Rocchetta / Expatica
How to Move Safely to Spain is written by Nick Snelling.
Text size
Vanessa Rocchetta finds this informative guide relevant and useful - even after eight years in Spain.
Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook
Google+
0
