Although it feels we must be on at least plan x by now!
Sadly, one of the vendors of the property died at the weekend which was obviously a sad situation for the family and we didn’t know what was going to happen to the sale.
However, with the benefit of hindsight we were fortunate that they didn’t accept a bank transfer last week as that would have meant the money would have been frozen inside the deceased person’s bank account while the inheritance is sorted. This can be massively complicated in Spain and we didn’t know if we were looking at days, months or even years before it was sorted.
We had signed a pre sale contract, which the heirs have to honor, so we were relatively confident as we that the sale would go ahead – but not guaranteed and didn’t know the timescale.
So that left us with the situation of leaving here by Monday at the latest, our furniture leaving Friday and nowhere for us to go or to store the furniture. We found a storage company in Lugo, so that looked OK, but accomodation for us was a bit more tricky, however we have found a place in Burela which accepts pets. I got in touch to explain that we were travelling with quite a menagerie, and the owner said that was fine. So we’ve got that booked for a month.
The property allows smokers and pets – so I think we have a good expectation of what to expect – but it’s better really to stay somewhere that isn’t a super-posh perfect place and be terrified of putting a foot or paw wrong!
However, yesterday the agent got in touch with us to say that the heirs are being very cooperative and are prepared to work towards us having access to the property before the paperwork their side is completed. It involves trust and good will on both sides, but hopefully means we’ll be able to put the furniture at least into the house on Saturday. So it sounds that even if that doesn’t work out, we’ll be looking at being able to move in sooner rather than later. We’d obviously prefer it to be on Saturday, as storage and then removal costs again are more expenses we hadn’t planned for – but it’s going to be worth it to know we can get on with our new adventure!
The rental property is only 5kms from the house as in the map above. New house is the red arrow, the rental is the red pin on the right hand side. So it is really convenient – much more than we could have hoped for.
The only real downside currently is that I promised the owner of the house we are renting that we wouldn’t leave the animals unattended – which means one of us at least will need to be there all the time. However, given the situation we could have been in – things are certainly looking better!