Long term rental an option?

[coldshot]

Hi guys

I just thought i would post here for a bit of advice.

Me and my girlfriend are giving thought to moving to spain initially for a year on a long term rental (although we would probably travel out for an extended holiday first to check things out) although we havent decided exactly where in spain we just want out of the UK really.

We can probably scrape together about 7500EUR for this, im just wondering if we put down say 6000EUR on a 12 month property what sort of monthly basic income would we need to live day to day? Obviously we wouldnt have rent to worry about and i would think not much bills?.

Also are there any hidden costs in leaving the UK for spain for an initial 12 months? the plan was simply to sell everything we had once we had decided to take the risk and do it....we have virtually no possesions anyway as we rent here in the UK at the moment.

And finally...since these long term lets are so cheap in spain why arent more people doing it? is it purely because of employment?

Thanks guy any help would be great


Matt

[jojo]

I havent noticed that long term rents are particularly cheap in spain but maybe it depends on the area. I'd say the cost of living is slightly cheaper by about 20% and utility bills are cheaper by about half, but are going up as there is high inflation here at the moment.

I guess from your figures you're planning to spend 500 euros a month on rent and then have a total of 1,500 euros for everything else for 11 months (they tend to only do 11 month rentals for legal reasons here). Well I spend that in one month, although I do have a husband, two kids, three dogs, a car and we live fairly well (although by nature, I'm known for being tight with money LOL), we go out to eat at least once a week and we do lots of trips to the beach and other places that kids want to go to!!

I'm not sure that 1,500 for a year or approx 100 euros a month would be enough for anyone though - I dont know, it depends on you and you're life style. But remember, if you're not working there will be a tendancy to spend more, if only cos of the boredom. I guess you need to think if thats a figure you could live on in the UK - call it £100 a month, could you live on it inclusively???? One thing I found out when I first moved here was that in the winter its cold, the properties here are designed to stay cool and need quite a lot of heating, which of course costs money

Jobs are hard to come by, but not impossible - certainly in the summer, but wages are poor, hours are long and most work is casual - unless you can speak the language fluently and have qualifications.

You need to come over and have a look round at what areas, what work maybe available and try to imagine life here when the novelty has worn off!!

Jo

[coldshot]

Hi jojo

Thanks for the reply, sorry i didnt make myself clear....with rent paid for we would plan to find what ever work is available...i actually have my own business which can be run from home fairly easily so we would have an income.

Im just wondering since the rent would be sorted what sort of rough month income would someone need? it could be that we put 6 months down and use the rest to live while we get sorted...money wouldnt be too much of an issue at this point though.

We are currently paying £550 a month on rent alone here on the UK along with bills which total approx £900 inc rent.

So we are probably living on about £300-£400 a month here if that

We dont really plan for this to be permanent its sort of a try it and see what happens scenario. We are both only 25 so havent really got anything to loose as far as i can tell.

Worse case scenario is we move back to the UK and rent a new place and find new jobs. Because i run my own business i can start it up anywhere and my gf is a qualified hairdresser but is happy doing any job really

[Tootsie]

Hi Matt,

I have recently joined this site and this is only my first post but I really wanted to post a reply to your thread.

First of all, please don't think that I, or anyone else that might reply are being negative, most people are simply being honest and I know that when you are looking to move to Spain and all excited it can be demotivating when someone gives you an honest account of how things might be!

I can only base my reply on my experience and I am sure that there will be many people along to give your their thoughts too.

My husband and I were in the same position as yourselves about 5 years ago, the only difference being that I was working for a company here in the UK that offererd to relocate me to Spain. We had no ties as such, no mortgage (we were renting), my husband was working for local governement n a secure job but was safe in the knowledge that if things didn't work out in Spain he could come back to his role, we had no kids etc. So we decided to go, we figured like most people "you only live once" etc! Like you we decided to give it a go for 12mths and see how it went.

So off we went! Like you we found a long term rental, from memory I think our rent was about 600euro per mth, this was for a 2 bed property but it was in a really nice area.

As I said, I had a job to go to and my husband was prepared to do what turned out to be the illusive "anything". We had savings in the bank, not equal to that of a house sale but still a fairly decent amount.

Everything went really well initially. I was really home-sick (I completely hadn't expected this, in fact I always thought that I was the freespirirt and my husband was the home-bird) but I could deal with that. We settled in to life pretty quickly and things were "ok".

Then after about 6mths I lost my job. At this point my husband still wasn't working, through no fault of his own, but yes through bad planning on our account I guess. We had arrived there in the Autumn which isn't the best time of year to arrive when looking for work, he couldn't drive which restricted him a lot so he was mainly looking for bar/cafe work, shop work or labouring. He did manage to secure a job in the following May in a new cafe bar but they came up against huge building reg's and as far as I know they still aren't open to this day! He walked miles every day, asking for work in bars etc and yes whilst he was happy to do this (he really wanted it to work out for us there) it also was soul destroying to see a man in his 30's who had always worked, having to go knocking on doors looking for work. Pride plays a big part I guess.

Things were still ok, financially we were getting by but then I think the emotions of it all seemed to snowball. I will be the first to admit, the easy option appeared to be to come back to the UK. We knew that my husband could go straight back to work and I could temp until something perm came along and it was almost like the UK, for all its sins, was our security blanket.

So that's what we did! 2mths short of a year we packed all our things up and came back to the UK! Things were HARD!!! Having to start all over again. Like you may do, we had sold all of our possessions (something that I would NEVER do again - they make a house your home!) and had to literally start from nothing.

We both gained jobs very quickly and got a car, settled back in etc.

Fast forward a few years and we are doing fingers crossed, really well here in the UK now. My husband has passed his driving test, I have my own business and life is good here! But something is still missing, this isn't where we want to be!

When we left Spain we always said that we wanted to return one day for good but we knew that we needed to do a lot of groundwork and better ourselves to make for an easier transition. We didn't put any time limit on it and I guess we just knew in the back of our minds that it would happen one day.

Well that one day is now around the corner so to speak. We have discussed it increasingly over the last 6mths and have made the decsion to make the move within the next 12-18mths. Some might think we are mad and I am sure that we probably are a little bit but things are VERY different for us this time, in many ways!

I know that this doesn't directly answer your question relating to cost of living etc and I wouldn't be the best person to answer that because it has been so long since I did a weekly shop there etc but I just wanted to highlight some of the pitfalls.

There is a huge list of things that we will do differently this time and I won't bore you with them

My reason for answering this post - because I could have been sat there writing it a few years ago and I just wanted to give you my thoughts.

I am by no means saying not to go but think about it long and have a plan B, try and have a little more money set aside, and go with a VERY open mind.

As I said I hear many people say "oh we are prepared to do anything for work out there" but sometimes the illusive anytihng doesn't exist!

There will be people along I am sure with the same scenario as me, who have stuck it out and it has worked out for them and I am delighted! We often ask ourselves if we gave in too easily but that's the benefit of hindsight I guess and if we hadn't of come back then we wouldn't be where we are today in terms of progresssion and I wouldn't change that for the world!

Good luck with whatever you decide and I hope that my post isn't too negative, moreover, honest!

Take care

[Tootsie]

Oh my life, I am sorry about my mammoth post!!!!! I also didn't see your post about having a job and your GF being a hairdresser before I posted sorry

[coldshot]

Hi Tootsie

That is a great post i have to say im glad you posted as it was a great help.

The whole job thing does bother us slightly and i doubt this will happen this year as before we go i would like us both to be able to speak spanish.

We have virtually no possesions at the moment anyway so that wouldnt be too much of a problem, everything we own that we would want to keep would fit into a small car...literally.

I think also its more the chance to get away from the UK we want not nessaserily to go to spain, we just chose spain because we had both been there before....considering the whole job situation we may have second thoughts about this and choose somewhere else.

Just out of interest Tootsie, as you lived out there and mentioned you had saving...can i ask how much of those savings you did use in the end?

We have no high expectations its more for the experience to be honest, we have a tendency to throw ourselves in the deep end quite often and would be quite happy to 'slum it' so to speak growing our own veg etc etc that isnt a problem.

[Tootsie]

Originally Posted by coldshot

Hi Tootsie

That is a great post i have to say im glad you posted as it was a great help.

The whole job thing does bother us slightly and i doubt this will happen this year as before we go i would like us both to be able to speak spanish.

We have virtually no possesions at the moment anyway so that wouldnt be too much of a problem, everything we own that we would want to keep would fit into a small car...literally.

I think also its more the chance to get away from the UK we want not nessaserily to go to spain, we just chose spain because we had both been there before....considering the whole job situation we may have second thoughts about this and choose somewhere else.

Just out of interest Tootsie, as you lived out there and mentioned you had saving...can i ask how much of those savings you did use in the end?

We have no high expectations its more for the experience to be honest, we have a tendency to throw ourselves in the deep end quite often and would be quite happy to 'slum it' so to speak growing our own veg etc etc that isnt a problem.

Thanks for reading and replying Matt, I have a tendency to go on a bit as do most women eh!!

It's good that you have your own business that you can do from out there and that your girlfriend has a trade, although there were a lot of english hairdressers working where we were (not all good though!)

Learning Spanish would be a must for me. When we went we knew a small amount, enough to get by in the bank, shops etc but by no means fluent and that was a really important thing for us to do when we got back.

However I look at it, the experience was fantastic. Living in Spain is wonderful but it isn't idyllic! I am not saying that this is how you see it but it is how many many people look at it before they go.

With regards to savings, we only came back with a very small amount. Having said that though, we did have a lovely life there and wanted for nothing really. Ran a car, when people were over we did all of the things that you would on a holiday, we furnished the house that we were renting etc. So yes, we could have been a lot more frugal and come back with more. One of the things that I would definitely do differently this time is think about the pennies more in those initial few mths!

As I said, sorry if I sound negative because I really don't want to. I would honestly recommend it to anyone, we miss the lifestyle so much but you really have to be prepared for the unexpected, hardwork, adjusting, and to be thrown completely out of your comfort zone!!!

[jojo]

On a lighter note though - If you're young and free, with no commitments then go for it!! Just make sure you have a back up plan for if things go wrong.

Jo

[martynb]

great post tootsie,hope you make it back

[rjnpenang]

Nice post Tootsie, at least you know what you,re letting yourselves in for!. But the difference between 5 years ago and now is staggering, then we couldn´t find staff at the beginning of summer, but now is a matter of firing (very expensive), takings are down by half!. Rob. (ex cafe owner)