Hey everyone

Great forum here for starters, looks like it’s well used by expats so is the ideal place for someone like me to ask for words of wisdom! To give a little information, I’m really at the earliest stages possible of researching the possibility of making the move to Spain, I’m half spanish and maybe thats what attracts me to the weather, the way of life there and the idea of giving our 3 kids a more enjoyable childhood - less crime, more fun?!

There’s myself, my wife and our 3 kids and I’m probably slightly lucky in that I run a small Internet company where I could probably re-locate to Spain without having to find another job, and hopefully offer my services to businesses in the localities and obviously back here in the UK.

We own a house which I’m currently thinking we would be best to rent out here, and then rent a villa/house? somewhere between Almeria and Torrevieja, doesn’t have to be on the coast but within 10-20 mins drive would be suitable. This gives us at least a fall back option if it didn’t work out there and we wanted to return, (hey I cant see it but I like to play safe!)

With the above in mind, I’d be grateful if you lucky expats already living there could give me some feedback on where would be suitable places to live in that region and where (online maybe?) I could research house rentals and prices - not the expensive holiday ones, their a tad bit pricey! 😊 I like the idea of living in or near a family orientated expat community with low crime rates etc and that region seems to be a good option as it’s close to the airport and close to some large cities where I can compute and offer my business services etc.

I’m not yet familiar with living costs as such, but our usual mortgage/water/electric/bills etc comes to approx ?600 per month which equals roughly 800 euros - how would this compare to renting/bills in this region?

well hi there waterman welcome to the forum here and hope we all can help you out but reading you post you half way here , Buy you keep your house in the Uk and rent it out , as in your job you will need to be not to far from the Airports aswell , you fine yourself traveling to from spain to the Uk with you job

you say you job can be done via the net , well you need to come down and take few looks around the place
problems 1 you need Adsl ( not every where yet and rual dsl is not good )
2 the GBP has got weak to the Euro , 100.00GBP to Euro is worth 133.84 cent rate via xe.com
3 you fine to get your ful tv from the uk bite harder just need a bigger dish ( ha you 3 kids , give them the spanish tv )
4 You , the miss and the kids will love out here ....

need to get few cheap flights down and hit the cheap hotels aswell rent a car and do the driving around the place ,
need to chat to ROBI (know ask rob from http://www.bcvillas.com/

as in food here is cheap but go to the coast and pay bit more
drink is the smae aswell

my rent is 350 per month 2 bed room apt power my place come to 120 month , run lot off gear here , o pool yet but working on that , rob any cheap house around elx with pools ?
fuel about 80 euros for jeep do lot of driving
flights 400 euros do travel lot
food well like my food so spend bite on it from jamon staeks fish and so on