Retiring types? Not us!

We waited for news about the development at Santa Ana del Monte, and it was to be a long wait: over a year later and nothing has been decided!  My editor Debs was also waiting for the revised manuscript, although her wait wasn´t to be quite as long, and I sent her the completed chapters to check as and when they were ready, so she could see that I was doing something.  Unfortunately we couldn´t say the same about the builder at Santa Ana del Monte!

One day we happened to be passing Habitacasa, the estate agency who had found us the flat we were renting, and looked in the window to see if there were any properties within our price range.  Manuel came out to chat to us, and persuaded us to look at a new flat on the edge of town rather than the older properties we were considering.  He explained that we would have to add IVA to the prices shown in his window and that the reason some of the older flats were so cheap was that they were either in a less desirable part of town or were in a building without lifts.

We had a few misgivings when we realised that the flat he had in mind was in an unfinished development - after all we had been there before and were 38000 euros poorer as a result of it!  However he promised us that we weren´t being asked to part with any money at this stage, so we agreed to have a look.  Our budget for buying a new home was less than it had  been, as we had no idea when we would get our original deposit back - if at all!

We liked what we saw, and were told that the first properties would be ready early in 2009, so we made the important decision.  We would try again to buy our dream home in Spain, and this time at least we would be aware of the pitfalls, having experienced them all buying at Santa Ana del Monte!