From Research to Ready: Prepping for Our Next Spain Trip
It was time to get our next trip to Spain on the books, so we made our reservations to visit the last part of September for a week. This time we’re going to fly into the Valencia airport. It is an hour away from Javea, about the same distance as the Alicante airport. We’ll be using both once we live there, so want to do our best to start getting familiar with the airports and the routes in and out of them.
Based upon all the things we learned in February, we now have a great idea of what we want and where to look. Our goal is to hopefully find a house during that trip. There are other things we’ve been working on though to make sure we’re prepared to do that if the opportunity presents itself.
We went back and did more research on the house purchasing process, to ensure we knew what to expect. We also needed to know the early steps from signing an intent to buy; what an initial deposit entails, and how long the process takes from intent to close.
We reached out to our attorney at Pellicer & Heredia for a video consult. We wanted to find out what the fee structure was to help us with the purchase, as well as the timing and fee structure to get an NIE in place. It was also important to find out when we should start the Spanish visa process, so that we have everything aligned once we close on the house. They will also help us with getting a relationship started with a local bank. When we arrive in September, we’ll meet in person with both the lawyer and the bank to make sure we’re all aligned.
Spanish mortgage rates currently sit well below typical US rates (check current rates here) — so we plan to finance part of our purchase and keep more of our money invested elsewhere. We’re going to dig into the details when we meet with the bank in September. You can find out more here about how Spanish mortgages differ from US mortgages.
We’ve also done a lot more research on a lot of things house related. From things we should be evaluating in each property once we narrow our choices down, to other things we should be aware of moving to the area. Things like pre-purchase home inspections, solar power options, pool maintenance requirements, landscaping, and more.
Then there are the daily living basics we need to be ready for. Getting a driver’s license, buying a car, emergency services, healthcare, etc. What do the first 90 days look like once we arrive in Spain? How do we wrap up things here in the US when we’re ready to go?
While it’s stressful, this is where the fun really begins. Once we visit again in September, we expect things to really get rolling so we can be ready to move after the first of the year.