Moving on

Searching for a home

May 29, 2011 · Filed under Uncategorized · Edit

After seven years in Spain the opportunity to return to Ireland came from an unexpected source. We had planned on returning but not until we had finished the renovation on our farmhouse in N.W Spain. We had a helper staying with us and at dinner one evening we mentioned that we would like to move back to Ireland one day, it so happened that she had friends that were looking for a small holding to buy in our area. Well they came and looked, then came again and stayed with us for a few days, at the end of their stay they decided that they wanted to buy our place. Given the state of the property markets and the worsening world economic situation we would have been stupid not to say yes.

So began the search for the next part of our life.

Most people when they want to move put their house on the market but we had not reached this stage, we had been keeping an eye on the Irish property market for some time, and had a list of saved ads, but that was it. We have a number of pets, who to us are the family, none of the pets had their passports, a process that takes seven months. So this was the first thing that we had to get started even before the people wanting to buy had paid a deposit. We had this feeling that even if this sale did not go ahead the forces were at work for our return to Ireland.

We decided that we would not go to Ireland until the sale was completed here which was not until March, but we knew that we would have no problems in finding what we wanted when we did go looking. It in fact turned out to be even easier than that, the last place to be put on our viewing list happened to be the first one that we looked at, we knew even from the drive way that this was the one.

We had arranged to stay with a friend and use her as our home base for the property hunt, we ended up having a great two week holiday without the hassle of house hunting. We did look at five of the other properties, but none came close to our first one. So the decision was made.