me and my partner have been planning to move to Almeria/Murcia region since Feb of this year. OUr house has just had an offer on it in the U.K. and we have re-thought the whole thing!!!
We have very little money to fall back on and dont have a job to go too when we arrive but we are wondering if we should bite the bullet and take the chance or maybe live to regret it and stay in the U.K.!
There was a chance of my partners parents coming and giving us some support with our two kids 5 and 7 but now they have backed out and they wont be coming.
What do people think and any honesty would be gretaly recieved….
Hi Paul, To be quite honest (as requested) I fail to understand how anyone with a family to support and with no other income (ie pension, letting income etc) and no job (and I assume no Spanish language) can even consider coming to a foreign country. Yes sometimes we have to take a chance but with your responsibilities you need to calculate the risk. There are no handouts here and whilst cost of living is lower here than the UK (say around 30% +/-) if you have no income and are just spending capital reserves….............you are doing the right thing to think about it.
I?ve seen families come to Spain, with good jobs to walk in to, and they?ve absolutely hated it here. They?ve taken the kids out of school, sold the house and the car and lasted 3 or 4 weeks before the wife takes the kids back to the UK. Obviously if you come to Spain to live and have a job and somewhere to live it?s much, much easier. But I rather suspect that on the whole, most people find this a difficult transition because their expectations are unreal.
It?s difficult to find work in certain parts of Spain and that alone can often make people think that they?ve made a bad choice.
You need to be honest with yourself and really understand the reason why you want to live abroad and you need to understand exactly what it is that you?re prepared to tolerate to have this new life. Sometimes things do go well for those that are prepared to take a gamble. But I rather expect that this is the exception to the rule. Living in Spain is not necessarily like being on holiday in Spain and you do find that the holiday period fades out rather quickly before reality sets in.
It?s a big step, especially if you have a family involved. There will always be other opportunities to come and live in Spain so, if I were you, I would give this some serious, serious thought. But then again, I?m not much of a gambler and I do prefer to err on the side of caution.
Don?t listen to all these doom slayers. If you don?t risk you don?t grow and if you aren?t growing you are dying. I moved to Spain from Canada. I have lived in many parts of the world. And many times it was very difficult, but the experience made me stronger and expanded my horizens. I don?t want to be on my death bed and think about what could have been. Those people above live lives scared, and become bitter and die. Drag your kids and all, they will respect you more and get more out of the life experience than sitting around in some tiny flat in cloudy England. Go for it.
Murica is ok. It is safe. But it is boring. Very hot, mostly desert. I loved in Cartagena and Murica. It is not that it is bad, it is just that there are much better places in terms of opportunity, land, economy, culture, etc.
Murica is ok. It is safe. But it is boring. Very hot, mostly desert. I loved in Cartagena and Murica. It is not that it is bad, it is just that there are much better places in terms of opportunity, land, economy, culture, etc.
correction, I “lived” in Cartagena and Murcia. Not I loved it. It was terrible.
YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE IS YOURS. Yours, that doesn’t mean all
There are people that can have a bad experience and people that can have a good experience and not to change their current situation for nothing and to be very satisfied. If there is something that I hate are the generalizations and the hypocrisies
correction, I “lived” in Cartagena and Murcia. Not I loved it. It was terrible.
And of course, cannot one make judgement of a place if one doesn’t truly know, because the north of Murcia, with more mountains, forests and narrow passes, doesn’t have any resemblance to the south of Murcia, near the coast, more arid and plane hot. And the city, equally. People don’t know this city for nothing, because the region of Murcia has never been in the spanish tourist arch. When they know it, they say different…
Of course, it is in the Mediterranean and it is the most southern part in Europe. Then, what do you expect of Murcia? That resembles to Scotland?
And the heat doesn’t last the whole year, are three months. There are also foreigners (and I have also seen some british) that complain of the time in England, that is already at night in winter to the 4 pm…The ex player of the Arsenal, Jos? Antonio Reyes, he also found terrible England 😊
The truth is that it is necessary to be very simple and not very mature, to want to make the decision of living in a place without knowing it previously. I believe that we are already adults
Most foreigners I’ve met in Spain who are doing well have made their own work. Doing up old property is an obvious route if you have the skills and a little equity to get into it, although with the downturn in house prices in Spain, you’ll have to add real value to get a reward from it. I know someone who has a good business delivering furniture and stuff - all he had to start with was an old transit van (and fluent Spanish). You can also scrape a living doing a bit of this and a bit of that - such as labouring, agriculture and perhaps some buying and selling at markets or whatever. However, you’ll be at the bottom of the food chain along with the Romanians and Ecuadorians - and they are presumably used to a relatively tough life back home. As for Murcia and Almeria, they have both been booming recently, with invernadero agriculture and building around golf courses generating lots of jobs, most of them poorly paid and some positively dangerous. People have been cruel about lovely little Murcia on this thread, I think. An elegant, friendly and relatively cheap little city, it has a lot going for it. Too bad the coastal part of the province has been sold over to the likes of Polaris World, which is like one of the rings of hell in Dante’s Inferno, but with golf. La Manga is hideous as well. As for Almeria, again it’s a city with real charm, but the province around it contains thousands of square kms of plastic greenhouses which are a long way from picturesque. Inland Almeria famously has desert, and then some nice mountains moving towards the Alpujarra. You don’t actually state whether or not you know Spanish and people have rudely assumed that you don’t - if they are right then you need to do something about it. Why not postpone a year, invest the equity from your house in a high-interest account while you rent in the UK, and (if it’s required) learn as much Spanish as you possibly can at evening classes etc? Thereafter, I agree with kabrav - go on your own and rent something for a few months.
i lived in madrid for 5 years, and to be honest, unless you are coming with income and funds, do not do it, there are now a lot of immigrants who wil do most jobs, for much cheaper than you can, plus there are no free handouts, you have to pay your way, local schools are ok, depending where you live, but if your children do not speak good spanish, they will suffer, believe me, you asked everyone to be trueful, and i am giving you a truefull answer.
You will never be able to get back on the UK property market, if you sell now, the best thing is to take a long holiday if you can and find out what you can do her, where you would live, how would it be for the kids.
It can make or break a family, and it is a huge move, i have moved around the world in the past 20 years so i do know how difficult it is for the kids, and also the wife , to make new friends, in a strange and new country. the uk is not that bad, and you would make a huge financial mistake if you did not seriously look into all your options
This is probably too late looking at the start date of this thread but…
Now, nor was August the best time to move top Spain if you do not have either a regular income, are well off, have an offer of a reasonably well paid job to cover your needs or are young and have nothing to lose.
I would not sell your property to make this move if you are not sure you are going to stay, once you do that you will knock yourself back to a much lower rung on the property ladder if you have to return to the UK. I think this would be foolhardy, I would rather live with a little regret for a while and wait… than possibly loose a lot of what I have now and find myself starting again, working for years to get to where I was years back, do not listen to people who say… make a go of it, because they will not suffer if things go pear shaped for you. It is fine saying this to someone if they have nothing or very little to loose, in the climate at the moment you have everything to loose.
If I was in your situation I would not take this sort of a chance unless you have something to fall back on, many people who try what your are wanting to attempt generally end up needing something to fall back on, if they haven’t got it then they generally fall into a domino effect and can loose everything they have.
Bide your time, hopefully an opportunity will come along in the future.
It would be crazy to move in the circumstances they describe. With kids you should stay in the UK, not to mention the move can be traumatising for them (as well as for you).
My recommendation is that if you are 100% convinced you want to come to Spain you should rent out your property in the UK. This will give you a rental income that will allow you to rent a property here (while you try things out) and probably pay a few bills too (since rent in the UK is higher there should be a difference in your favour).
Never sell property unless you absolutely have to.
