Originally Posted by Trasnadonnta

Moses2013

1) Not everyone wishes to move to Spain. Not everyone can either, due to professional restraints or whatever. The dream for some may be a sunny bolthole in another country which they pursue by saving hard and can finally reach with limited funds in beautiful parts of undiscovered Spain.

2) Others may see Spain as a country where they can reconstruct their retirement following the financial turmoil of the last 10 years, where they can still get back on the property ladder, otherwise impossible at 'home' in advancing years, in a country they have an affinity for. However, they don’t necessarily have enough remaining funds to spend on long term rental to make a more informed choice prior to purchase, when their target is ownership for security of tenure and long term affordability. So they go along with their gut instinct based on quickly acquired favourable impressions of a particular area offering possibility, and follow up with a courageous leap of faith in agreeing to make a purchase. For such people, losing what limited funds they have left would be a catastrophe.

3) I will use my own case as an example of different financial perspectives in different personal circumstances. Having spent most of my professional life in landlocked Switzerland, I returned home 'well off' as some might say, to enjoy a financially comfortable retirement by the sea, to a property purchased at top price just before the crash, and with the firm intention of finding a bolthole in sunny Spain to brighten up the long, wet winters in Ireland. The intervening years saw my investments wiped out by the crisis, in a country currently undergoing a two-tier recovery. My home by the sea is now worth a third of what I paid outright for it. In comparison to what befell others, through it all I have sincerely considered myself one of the very lucky ones.

Undeterred, I’m still looking for my bolthole in Spain. Ten years ago, it wouldn’t really have bothered me to lose 20/30K, apart from being in seriously bad humour for a while! Nowadays, it would be a heavy blow, but considerably more so for those more adversely affected decent, hard-working people from all walks of life who lost jobs, homes, nearly everything, through no fault of their own, yet who are still ‘fortunate’ enough to have the guts to start afresh in another country they like, albeit with severely limited funds.

The concept of ‘not too much to lose’ depends very much on what’s at stake and the level of risk taken, which for some might be perilous if it goes wrong, but who don't have another way out of the aftermath of the crisis.

I initially reacted to your comment because I have found comments in other parts of this site to be insensitive towards people asking whether less expensive properties in Spain are worth pursuing, and even uneccessarily downright arrogant and rude at times, to the extent that people just 'disappeared' from the site when such comments were made, probably crushed (I’m not referring to your comment on this forum. I just considered that comment came from a limited perspective which I took the liberty of attempting to broaden).

Originally Posted by patrick.j

Hopefully I will be able to reply to messages in the not too distant future as I use the Forum more often .
cheers patrick.j

Originally Posted by McGregor