I wanted to get advice from those who have done it. I moved to the South of Spain and loved the lifestyle here. We are still renting(I sold my home in Netherlands) but looking to buy here. We have already found schools and daycare and made some friends, so the area where we are looking is pretty locked down. We want to buy a forever home because even if we move(only will if we have to due to work or similar), we would keep this forever as a holiday location.
Unfortunately, that area we are looking at has very few kinds of houses we want in a suitable price range. We have viewed about ten places plus checked another 100+ online and disqualified.
Out of those, there are two potential homes on the market. The first is in optimal location but needs quite a bit of work. I estimate the total work will be around 100k(contractors estimated 75k, but I want to be safe). The asking price is 550, and someone had offered 460, which the owners instantly declined. They might take 500k, but only a little below. The beach is about 800m away, and restaurants, stores, and schools all are within a 5 min walk, basically a large single-family home downtown. This property has no tourist permission as the area is purely residential, so while it could be rented on cashflow positive, that is subject to local permission that is not guaranteed. I also discussed this with an architect.
I could make this my dream home with expansion which would work with current local permissions, but this would take the total reno to 150-175k.
The second home is out of my preferred area. Or, super close (about 2.5km), which means nothing with the car but annoyingly just long enough that I would need to drop kids to school/daycare while they could walk if we lived in a first home. This quickly adds 30min extra for my days, or we will likely split driver/bike duties with my wife. This one has an asking price of 695, but talking to the owner, it would sell for 650k. I will require zero work and has the added benefit of 200m from the beach. It's currently rented and has a holiday home for about 65k per year. I've done home renovations before but didn't have kids then, so I don't know what I would get into doing this.
This house doesn't have offers outside of us. I tried the 625 offer, but the owner commented that he might as well continue to rent. I don't think they have to sell situation here.
We could afford both easily. From your experience, would you take a large reno project in a star location or ready home just a less optimal location with no work required when the end of the day price and future resale value of these homes would likely be very similar/same? We do have two full-time workers and kids. I'm not afraid reno is going over budget(I would hate that), but I have access to a lot of additional funds in case I have to, so there is no real financial trouble risk.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/1181boi/buying_forever_home_in_spain/
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