A new Spanish adventure

So ... back in January, Cathy and I went to the beautiful region of Murcia in Spain, ostensibly to look for a new house for Cathy to buy once she had sold the gorgeous Étoile de Mer in France. I was delighted to be involved in helping her look around but I readily admit that I was more than a little envious of her plans. We saw five houses, including an odd 2-storey maisonette (complete with contents), a completely destroyed tiny house in a hamlet of only 5 houses, and a house with a garden steeper than Mount Everest.

When we got back, one house of the remaining two kept coming back to us but it was over Cathy's budget. In a moment of madness and, as it turned out, not ill-placed optimism, I asked my mum if she'd like to be part-owner of a house in Spain with Cathy. "No", she said. Ah well, it was worth asking, I thought, not expecting the next words ... "... but if you want to, I'll stump up your half!" Not wishing to look a supremely generous gift horse in the mouth, whilst gaping open-mouthed at the text message in front of my eyes, I digitally stuttered "Oh my god. Are you SERIOUS?!" closely followed by "Yes please!"

There ensued a somewhat protracted period of negotiation, with our first offer being turned down, not on the basis of the price offered, but on the completion date (they wanted to complete in about 3 months but we were looking at more like 6 months). The agents said they would keep in touch about the house just in case it was still on the market a few months later but we assumed it would be snapped up fairly quickly. Just a couple of weeks later, however, they said they were going to contact the sellers and see if they could convince them to accept our offer but with the later completion date. We weren't confident but less than an hour later, we received an email entitled "Great news!" 

A flurry of texts ensued, much along the lines of "Are we sure about this?" but later that day, we confirmed our offer and the ball was well and truly rolling. 

The next few months involved hundreds of emails, signing contracts, signing Power of Attorney paperwork, opening a bank account (13 attachments all to be printed, signed and sent to Spain - not easy when I was in the UK and Cathy was in Doha!)

But on the 4th of August, 2016, it happened. A "Congratulations" email popped into our inboxes, with confirmation that completion had gone through that morning and it was actually ours. Ours. OURS! A six-bedroomed stone-built house in Blanca, in the beautiful Ricote Valley, Murcia. 

EEK!


THIS is the estate agent's listing for it (we'd only taken 3 photos on our visit so this was all we'd had to go on apart from our memory):
First visit should take place in late September. Can't wait!