This post focuses on the apartment search in Spain. With the school registration fees paid and the places secured, everything about this relocation became suddenly real. It was the middle of April and we started, very slowly, looking at the rental options. There were many questions to answer. The first one was where to look. The second one, should we rent a house or an apartment. The most important one, however, was: how much we are willing to pay for the rental. All these three criteria are interlinked and one determines the other. We didn’t want to buy a property straight away. The plan was always to come, live here for a while, see how we like it and then go from there.
Urbanization
The school is located in La Eliana, however not in the town center but more on the outskirts, in the urbanization. Our friends live in this urbanization and they can walk to school in less than 10 minutes. That was a tempting option to look for the house to rent nearby (near the school and near them). Our friends belong to this closed WhatsApp group for this urbanization and they posted the message saying that we were looking and if anyone was planning to rent or knew anyone who was renting. Living in this urbanization would have many advantages (like the mentioned proximity to school and friends and a common swimming pool), but there were other things to consider as well. The monthly rent would be definitely higher than renting an apartment and there are not many other amenities nearby (meaning, you will have to drive if you want to go to the shop, doctor, etc). In the UK we lived in a small village, on the outskirts of it and close to the fields and we felt really isolated there. Relocating to Spain was about The Change (in a broad way), and deciding about where to live was one of the major factors. We wanted to be close to people and to all the amenities. Moreover, I was born and grew up in a big city in Poland and I have missed the “hustle and bustle” of the city. Back in the UK I used to do all the driving and it was a lot of it, especially with the children’ s extracurricular activities and having friends in Surrey and sister in Liverpool so relocating to Spain was about me having to drive less. Living in the urbanization without a grocery shop, church (we are Catholic), doctor at hand, I would be forced to drive everywhere.
La Eliana
So our attention was drawn to La Eliana town center as the only place which was not in the vicinity was the school and all the other facilities and services were easily approachable. However, that meant that we were looking mostly at apartments and we were not sure how we liked that idea. We had lived in the house for the last 9 years. Our girls didn’t know any better. They loved having the garden and they loved having stairs (a first floor). Although the house wasn’t big, we had a massive loft to store things and we had an office transformed from the garden shed. Apartments normally don’t come with extra storage spaces and you can’t just run outside anytime you want. So renting an apartment would be a kind of downgrading for us. However, all the other things considered and rental price definitely lower than the one of renting the house, moving into an apartment seemed like a logical choice.
Big city rental
We had also considered looking to rent in Valencia. The girls could still go to Iale as it is easily approachable from the metro station and there are also school buses you could use for an extra charge. However, we didn’t explore this option properly. There are many reasons for it. First, we didn’t know the Valencia’s neighbourhoods very well. As tourists we had visited all the touristy places and these are not the areas we would like (or could afford) to live. We didn’t have time to do this research properly as we both worked full time and there were millions of other things to do, like packing for example. Like with every city in the world, there are nice neighbourhoods, clean, safe, family friendly, and not so nice – better to be avoided. I have lived in Spain for 10 months now and I have started to recognize the names of Valencia’s neighbourhoods and where they are located, because I make regular trips to different parts of the town to get the feel of them. Acquiring this knowledge takes time and it is also good to visit them in the different times of the day and night. Without this knowledge I don’t think I would make a decision to move my family somewhere, just based on the price of the apartment or proximity to the metro. Decisions like that are also easier if you do not have children to think about. Again, one of the reasons for us to relocate was for our children to spend time outdoors. So we would look for an apartment that is close to parks and playgrounds, possibly close to the beach as well. In the UK our girls used to get private swimming lessons and dancing lessons so we would also look for an indoor swimming pool. For me, I was really looking forward to starting going to the gym. I haven’t exercised in years and I wanted to be fit again. So proximity to a gym would be important for me too. As you can see there were many factors to consider when choosing the right neighbourhood and as I had mentioned earlier, we didn’t have time to do that.
When we agreed on La Eliana, we signed up on Idealista (property search website). We have picked our main criteria (like 3 bedrooms, budget) and we continued to check if anything new came up. There weren’t many that were coming up. We started looking in April but the question was from when we were willing to pay, if we found somewhere we really liked. We wanted to move to Spain around the 20th of July, just after the girls finished their school. However, this would be a terrible time to search for an apartment. Many owners prefer to rent short term when the high season comes so there are not many long term rentals available. The other thing to remember is that from the beginning of August everything shuts down and the Spaniards go on holiday. Our friends advised us that there will be hardly any agencies open and even if we found something, it might be difficult to sign a contract if everybody is away.
In between options
One of the options is a mid term rental. There are companies who handle it and you can find apartments for a month or two months or whatever is convenient. They are like a bridge between Airnbnb or Booking.com and long term rentals. I think using rentals like that would allow you to look for a long term rental when the high season is over but would also allow you to visit different towns and neighbourhoods to decide which area is the best to settle for longer. We used something similar but it was done through a private contact. The friend of a friend was going away to the mountains for a month and offered her house to us for an agreed fee. The house would be available from the date when we were planning to come to Spain (which was around the 20th of July). So at least we had somewhere to stay for a month. We had learned about this possibility in February when we were visiting Valencia and we had a preliminary agreement.
We have also considered hiring someone to look for the apartments for us. We talked to a couple of agents who would schedule the viewings, considering our criteria, and then we would fly to Valencia just for a day to see the properties and pick something out. The only problem was again that these agents didn’t really listen to us and sent us links to the properties which were either way too expensive or not in the area we were interested in. This was really annoying. That’s why here in Litora we truly understand what it means to LISTEN and UNDERSTAND what people are looking for and find them a property which ticks the boxes.
Bingo!
On the 20th of June I contacted an agent of the property that came up on the Idealista site which looked like something that could be a great fit for our family. It has 3 bedrooms, is situated in the center of La Eliana, has a great terrace and is very bright. I am still amazed (and not only me but whoever I tell this story) how fortunate I was I came across this agent. His name was Jose Alfonso and he worked for the agency called Urbillar in La Eliana. Between the 20th and 26th of June when we paid the reservation deposit for the apartment, we exchanged many emails. He was very communicative, informative and very very helpful. Talking to him was like a breath of fresh air which restored my faith that there might be some good Spanish agents. The agency wanted to sign the contract with us in the first week of July, but we managed to postpone it until the 9th. Again, we wouldn’t have accomplished that without the help of our friend Olivera. She stayed in touch with the agency and communicated to us what documents were required and she also checked the rental agreement for us. One of the problems was the lack of NIE numbers (Numero de Identidad de Extranjero – a unique tax and identification number assigned to foreigners in Spain), but the agency agreed to sign the contract with our passports and deliver NIE when obtained.
When I read this paragraph now it sounds like everything was very straightforward. However, I must admit the weeks between the 20th of June and the 9th of July were very stressful and full of uncertainty. One of the days before anything had been agreed, the ad had disappeared from the site and I thought it had been taken. However, it was just the maintenance of the website. The other thing was the problem of our British payslips. Spanish agencies do not like foreign payslips and in many cases require a guarantor who has a Spanish income. One day I was waking up happy that we found our place, the next I was crying as nothing was certain anymore. In the end I believe that Jose Alfonso was our Guardian Angel and he felt for us and our situation and made sure that we will get this rental agreement signed.
Signing the contract
My husband and I arrived in Valencia on the 9th. We saw first the temporary rental which we agreed to go ahead with (even though we would be paying for the two places for a month). The reason was that our long term apartment was unfurnished and we were expecting all our furniture to come from the UK in the second part of August. We also thought that it would be nice for our children to enjoy a big house with access to the community pool as it felt like being on holiday for them. After that we saw our apartment for the first time. It met our expectations and didn’t look much different from what we saw on the photos and video. We loved the big terrace and the bright and spacious living room. So we were happy to go ahead with it and at the agency, in the presence of the agents, landlord, our friends (as guarantors) and us we have signed and received the keys. The apartment search in Spain was over.