howey

well its snowing here now and me and the wife are sick of life in england. would love to move to gran canaria or tenerife . we have 2 kids 7 yrs and 4 mts old..am a hgv driver and she is a housing manager for local council...is there jobs out there for us and what type of wages would we be looking at? id only have about £60k to fetch over with us. would ideally like to buy a house for that , but think id need a lot more . is it easy to get a mortgage? what are the schools like over there?

any help appreciated

howey

well thanx for everyones help...greatly appreciated

howey

fantastic site ....very helpfull.......

jdr

Perhaps nobody here is from the Canary Islands ?
Don`t want to put a downer on it, but going on this area.
You won`t get a house for 60,000 on the islands as it is more expensive to live there than the mainland, mortgage will be on earnings related same as UK.
You will struggle to get an HGV job unless it`s a UK company delivering to Spain or visa versa, and you will need fluent Spanish and knowledge of the area you move to.
Your wife will need fluent Spanish language and letter writing skills to get any admin work.
Wages are very low even if you can get a job.
Don`t know the area, but Spanish schools around here are excellent.

Grayling

I was in gran canaria a few weeks ago.

A decent house anywhere near the touristy areas would probably go for over £300000.

Other areas would be cheaper but still very expensive.
I am sure you could buy an apartment for much less but I doubt if a family could live in it.

I am no expert and was not looking seriously but I was surprised at how expensive property is.

No doubt someone who lives there could give a view on the less touristy areas.

Apparently unemployment is also now at very high levels so I doubt if it would be easy to find work.

Good luck

G

lcortez

Mortgages in Spain are done on affordability,not income multiples.They have a table that they work from,for example;

For two people,with no kids,you need to have Eur650 left over after all other exspenses such as mortgage,credit cards,food,HP,have been taken out.

Not sure what the disposable income is for a family,but it should be pretty easy to find out.Of course the "credit crunch"has thrown everything up in the air.
On a good note the Spanish banks generally dont do credit checks for mortgages,(house is the security),and its a buyers market a present,some pretty outragous offers have been accepted

Above poster is quite right about housing cost in the islands,though.

DebsyW

I don`t personally know about the housing market but I do agree that there is no work on Gran Canaria. A family member lives there -still living with parents cos no way of affording anywhere - and definately no work. Very high unemployment. She is doing an on-line university degree now as there is nothing else for her to do. She went to Uni on mainland Spain and is now doing a second degree to `pass the time`

lcortez

Why not the mainland?

DebsyW

Because she has no money and so has to go back living with her mother. She earns `pocket money` in-between by working in a friends shop. She could stay at Uni on the mainland but would be alone there.

lcortez

Sorry should have explained myself better,was actually aiming the question at the OP

DebsyW

sorry .... but at least you know why now....