georgecliff

hi all

my name is George me & my wife (Barbara) are hoping to move to Spain in the near future. we are going to start looking around early in Feb 2011 for one month
we don't know which part of Spain to start looking.
we are both retired & looking for some of the good life in the countryside
we will be hoping to meet some ex-pats in Spain on are trip in Feb

pwwm

Oh dear, you really need to have some idea, do you want mountains, which there are one or two , coastal eastern side, southern side west or northern and green , southern and hot and usually very dry oh gosh so many different places, nobody here can tell you what is best, we can all tell you about the area we are in, but ultimately the choice is yours, Spain is quite diverse.

jojojojojo

.... do you need to be near a good airport, near to a good town, near to coasts, near to expat communities.......??? As pwwm says, there are so many diverse areas in Spain. Write a wish list and a "need" list and have a look on google earth, that will help you to narrow it down and then ask us lot and we'll tell you our thoughts lol!!!

Jo xxx

Jur

Why don´t you fly to Faro airport, Portugal. Arrange a rental car beforehand and cross the border into Spain (45 min.drive). Then have a look around passing by the costas make an occasional side trip inland. Take 3 months and end up in the north and make your journey back to the UK. Then decide. Maybe.

The thing is if you´re retired and going to rent a place anyway, you can always move if you don´t like it.

jollyjack

There is also finance to be considered. Property prices in some areas are HUGELY different from others. If my house here in Valencia Province was in the Costa Del Sol it would be worth about 450,000 Euros. Instead it is worth about 170,000

Jur

But how much did you pay for your house ?

jollyjack

150,000 but then we added another bedroom, bathroom and terrace, put in a new kitchen and bathroom etc. And then the crisis came and here we are. 170,000 is probably realistic whereas before the financial upheaval we might have been asking 180,000+. But such is life. We will, after all, pay less for our next house so it all comes out OK in the end. We hope!

Rotor

There`s a reason for that

jollyjack

And what reason would that be?

If it is locality I much prefer Valencia to the CDS.

Jur

That´s not bad for a house in Spain, I´m sure that if you would have bought at the Costa del Sol you would have paid double! (And would have seen the value of your place tumbling down during this bloody crisis)

jollyjack

Its got 3 beds, 3 baths, 2 terraces and a really big patio with trees and a pond and a Bar so I don`t think its too bad really.

Jur

Looks like a nice town! http://www.lafontdencarros.es/castel...io/galeria.php

jollyjack

I suppose its a pretty average small Spanish town. But there is always something going on, virtually every weekend there is something. The Town Bands are very good and very active. The guy who built our extension plays the trombone in the main Band and always waves as they go marching past the house

We are surrounded by orange groves here which means money so we have 5 Banks for a population of less than 3,000 people.

Life is quite good here but it is time to move on I think, although I will miss a lot of the Spanish people who have been really good to us.

Rotor

Most of the illegal house scandals and land grab reports seem to originate from that region, Costa de la Luz ,Costa Tropical, costa brava are nicer .

jollyjack

Sez you.

Have you been here?

Having lived in Andalucia I wouldn`t go back there again. I have not been to the areas you mention so I can`t comment.

And of course it depends on what you mean by "nicer". Nicer for you might not be nicer for other people.