DO YOUR RESEARCH

It’s very easy to fall in love with the idea of a place when you see beautiful images on TV or in magazines. These images are designed to sell a dream. That said, in ‘Amanda and Alan’s Spanish Job’ Moclín looks absolutely beautiful and the TV images tell no lies: it is beautiful. We love it here and we can’t imagine ever living anywhere else. However, there were also beautiful scenes shot on the Costa de la Lux and the Costa del Sol, as the intrepid DIY pair took to kayaks and went in search of dolphins and whales.

CLIMATE

Inland Andalucia has a very different climate and vibe from the coast. Travel 20 minutes inland, and there are huge mountains; Moclín sits on top of a mountain that is the same height as Mount Snowdon in the UK. Europe’s southern-most ski resort is in the Sierra Nevada, so it does get cold. In the winter, as soon as the sun sets, the temperature drops and fires need to be lit or heating turned on. On the coast, the climate is more balanced and temperatures are milder in the winter.

In the winter, locals inland will wear winter clothes until at least the end of April and it is best to be prepared and not be caught out. Don’t expect to be wandering around in the evenings in shorts and t-shirts in inland Andalucia during the winter months. If you want a temperate all-year-round climate, then stick to the coast.

In the summer, it can get very hot inland, with temperatures nudging 40 degrees, but the heat is dry. On the coast, it might be slightly cooler but it is also more humid.

ROADS & TRANSPORT

Check out the roads. Generally, Andalucia’s network of roads is extremely well maintained but if you have a fear of driving up the side of a mountain do some research beforehand, as a mountain village may not be the best choice for you.

ENVIRONMENT

If you are buying in a village, the environment may seem extremely quiet during the winter but if you happen to buy a property next to the village bar then the summer months will tell a different story. If you choose a property within the vicinity of a hub of village life, you can’t subsequently complain about noise when the village gets together for their annual fiestas.

If you have the opportunity, and you have found an area that you have fallen in love with, consider renting for a period of time to find out what life is really like before you buy. Even better if you rent during the winter months. If you can’t manage a long-term rental, just come and stay in the area for a week or two at different times of the year to make sure you see it in various seasons.

Some years ago, I used to rent out villas throughout the Aegean Islands in Greece. We love the Greek Islands but wouldn’t buy a property to live there permanently. Winters can be bleak: the Greeks tend to disappear back to Athens  for the winter, and many of the tavernas close after 15th October until the Spring of the following year. Rain can be torrential and it can be cold.

When we first arrived in Spain, we rented a friend’s house and pitched up at the end of September to be welcomed by a whole week of solid rain.

Renting gave us the opportunity to really explore Andalucia and make sure we found the right place for us. Over 12 months, we travelled the length and breadth of the region and it just reinforced our belief that Granada was where our hearts lay. Then we were able to narrow down our search to discover our perfect village and perfect house.

In the most rural villages, you may not get the public services you might expect.

Remember that you are in rural Andalucia and it is wild and beautiful for a reason. If there is a bus service, it is most likely limited and designed to get workers to and from the nearest town. There may not be a medical practice in the village, or even a shop. The first village in which we lived didn’t even have a bar when we moved there. However, in many cases the lack of essential services is why the village maintains a tranquillity that is hard to find elsewhere.

In the attempts to repopulate many of these villages that have lost a large number of inhabitants over the decades, new investors can help to move the provision of services in the right direction, but don’t expect there to be the same public transport system that you would find in a large town or city. Breathing new life into a suffering community can help increase the provision of healthcare services at a very local level, transport services, schools and shops and with your investment in a rural area you can help improve the lives of everyone who lives there.

Although buses may not run on the hour every hour, you will find that internet connection across the whole of Spain is hugely impressive. 5G is common almost everywhere and many rural area now have access to high-speed fibre broadband. The Spanish Government’s connectivity plan “outlines actions to cover 100% of the population with more than 100 Mbps by 2025. It focuses on rural areas that are not covered by the operators’ own deployment plans. Moreover, the plan includes measures to achieve 1 Gbps connectivity in data-intensive industry and research areas.” This is hugely amibitious and impressive by anyone’s standards. There are times when we struggle to get 3G coverage on visits to London!

We have restored two properties in Moclín and put together the team of builders to restore Casa Alamanda, so have a fairly good understanding of how the system works. We bought Casa Higueras simply because the view was impossible to beat. Of course we knew that we’d have to spend money on the house to create the spaces we wanted, but the house was far from being a ruin. Someone once said to us, once we had finished our building work, that we would never recoup the money we had spent and we responded that this missed the point of what we had done. Casa Higueras is our forever home, not a property to turn around for a quick profit. The market here, although buoyant at the moment, is not for speculators who think they can buy cheap, restore cheap and turn for a profit. That said, we do know a couple who have a very successful business buying old village and coastal houses, restoring them, renting them out and then selling them on, but all on a very small scale. This works if you have a very trusted team and tight financial management abilities.

If you are going to buy a house to restore, bear in mind that the restoration costs will be somewhere between €600 and €1,000 per square meter, erring towards the €1,000 unless you are prepared to do a lot of work yourself. Also, if you are going down the restoration route, make sure you have a very trusted builder or team of builders. As with anywhere, there are good builders and there are bad. If you happen to get stung, it can cost you a lot of money and it is very difficult to recover that lost money. It goes without saying but we would always, always recommend using local, Spanish tradespeople.

The benefits of restoring can be huge, as you create the spaces that work for you and you do not have to live with someone else’s design. However, it may not work for you financially.

Look at the sums: if you buy a house of 100m2 that needs to be restored, and you pay €50,000 - €60,000 for that property, you will probably then have to spend €80,000 - €100,000 to restore it. You may find a house on the market that has already been restored with an asking price of between €95,000 - €125,000, saving you a tidy sum. Ultimately, it depends on what you are looking for, and whether or not you feel up to the stresses associated with property restoration, or whether you just want to move straight into your new home.

When you find the right house, how do you go about making and negotiating an offer? In the same way as you would anywhere else.

In 95% of cases, all property vendors will be open to offers. However, and we really want to emphasise this, there is a difference between making an offer that opens negotiations and making an offer that will insult the vendor. If you are looking to buy a property in a rural village, and hope to integrate with the local people, insulting the vendor with a ridiculously low offer will be a huge mistake as the vendor probably knows everyone within a 20 mile radius.

If you see a property that you like, of course suggest an offer but be circumspect about it. Expecting 40% off the asking price is, we would say, likely to make the vendor less inclined to negotiate and it certainly won’t encourage us to negotiate on your behalf. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, and as agents we can always advise you on what we think might be an acceptable opening offer, depending on the individual circumstances of the vendor.

If you are a UK passport holder, you no longer have the right to reside permanently in any EU member state unless you have existing residency within that country. You can stay for a period of 90 days in any 180 days.

There are Visa options, the two most popular being:

Non-lucrative Visa

Digital Nomad Visa

Anyone, however, can buy a property in Spain, and the process for buying a property is very straightforward: you simply need an NIE/TIE (an ID number for non-Spanish people), and a Spanish Bank Account is advisable for the payment of utility bills and local taxes.

You can buy a property with a tourism license and generate income from that property but as a non-resident you will have to pay 24% tax on that income. You will also need to consider the management of the property in your absence.