Moving to Fuerteventura

We’re moving, well that’s the plan!

I have wanted to move to Spain for many, many years, ever since we visited some work colleagues who retired to Moraira in the Costa Blanca back in the 1980s. But it seemed that it was not to be. On our first two attempts at buying a property we were gazumped. Then, our third attempt to buy we thought, this is it!  Alas, shortly afterwards we were both made redundant (we worked for the same company) and had to pull out of the purchase. After that we sort of gave up.

We religiously visited Spain for holidays whenever we could. Then, in February 2014, we decided to meet up with some friends who had gone to Fuerteventura for a holiday. We had been to the island three times before, but that was in the mid 1980s, and to be honest we couldn’t really remember too much about it, and what we did remember was now unrecognisable.

Well, we simply fell in love with the island and went back as soon as we could, hiring a car and exploring.

It was in August 2015 that we decided we really wanted to live in Fuerteventura, and started making plans. Whilst over there on a holiday, we were tempted to look at a property that we had seen and liked on the internet (fatal!).  We fell in love with it. However, any purchase would depend upon the sale of our home in the UK, and we had strictly told ourselves we would not put any offer in until we had exchanged contracts on our UK home. However, we were stupidly persuaded by the estate agent to put down a deposit (BIG mistake number 1!).

Unfortunately, the sale of our home in the UK was not as easy as we had thought. We knew a lot of people who wanted it, but they couldn’t afford it.   We then had several offers on our home all at once. Unfortunately, the offer we actually accepted fell through more than two months later, the day before we were expecting to exchange. It turned out the buyers didn’t have the money as the estate agent had informed us!  In the meantime the estate agent in Fuerteventura persuaded us over the phone to put down another deposit on the property in Fuerteventura in order to retain it, saying more or less don’t worry about the contract date (BIG mistake number 2!).

We had another offer on our home the day after the first one fell through, but unfortunately that fell through too as they couldn’t get a mortgage!!   Anyway, we went to Fuerteventura for a week and found that the situation quickly changed with the estate agent. We found out they hadn’t exactly been truthful with us and told us, among other things, we had lost our deposit (which went against what they had previously told us) and the vendor wanted to put the price of the property up by €40,000! The agent said some quite outrageous things and tried to persuade us to put yet another deposit down, whilst saying we’d lost the first two! Needless to say we walked away and always advise people to use extreme caution when talking to certain estate agents.

Back in the UK, we soon had another buyer for our home.  But, unbelievably, this one also fell through after a couple of months.

The good thing was that each time our sale fell through, we did manage to get another offer very quickly.  We are now in the position where we are waiting with baited breath to exchange!  This time it is a lovely couple and we are just hoping it does not fall through again!

In the meantime, the property we fell in love with is still on the market, and while the price has gone up, it only went up €5,000, not the €40,000 the agent told us.  Will we go for it once we sell our home?  Well, that’s a very good question!

So, why this website?

Well, before retiring I had been a professional website developer since 1999 (previous to that I did desktop publishing) and I have to admit that I simply love doing websites. It wasn’t just a job, it was my hobby too! When researching about moving to Fuerteventura, and the island itself, I found that there were no websites with all the information I wanted and those there were, were terribly out of date and difficult to navigate. So of course it was only natural for me to start a website of my own, somewhere where I could keep all my research in one easy place, and also develop and share my other hobbies of photography and fine art.

I will be adding all the information that I struggled to find, and hope that it will also be a “meeting” place, somewhere that like-minded people can meet up and chat, or learn!

So, welcome to my website, and I hope that you join in and have fun!

Jill Terry