Little Ira George (1 years and 2 months old) and I have been house hunting for the past month or so. Surprisingly enough, we do so by train and bus. We try to be sustainable. There are some things we've learned about the house market in Spain to date.
If one has 150,000 euros or a permanent position that asures one gets a loan that brings their money to that level, buying a house within an hour of Barcelona is not too hard. There are some nice houses in that price range. There are not many. Most cost more. But around the Calafell area I have found a few that I liked.
I started the process in July with Esther -- a very good friend that is part of our extended family. I saw a few properties. She had a car, and I had a rental vehicle, which I left parked outside her house most of the times. The one I offered for was in the Bisbane des Penedes. They asked for 85,000 euros. It was a pueblo house with water and light that needed some repairs, but was really nice otherwise. I like it, but what I did not like was that the village did not have a train station. There was a bus that google had not heard off. They said it would go to the train station in El Vendrell, from there the train would take a little more than an hour to get to Barcelona Sants. Then I would take the metro for three stops and I'd be at work. I made a half harted offer for 75,000. I would have paid the money if they had accepted it, but they did not. They wanted 80,000, and the location was not great. I would have had to drive to work for 80 km. This meant driving 160 km a day with no real alternative for transportation. It is not horrible given that Barcelona is a large city and a centre of industry, but not great. The house also needed work. We stayed with Esther for a few days. She was clearly very tired at the end of our visit. The combination of house hunting, of her own family (she has two children), and us was taking a toll. It did help me understand the process.
What did I want? I was hoping for a house with a garden that also had public transportation to work. I can drive, but I wanted to have the alternative of a train + a short metro ride. I looked at prices up to 150,000 or so in the hope that Andy and I could use our savings plus a small loan. Some houses were lovely. One was called the Villa of God (in Spanish). It was up some hills in the middle of cactuses on a winding road that felt like one was travelling to heaven -- not always in a good way, but perhaps the trip to heaven is not pleasant either. It was surrounded by cats (first proof of heaven). The person who was showing it to us had a porche parked inside the yard. The house had a nice pool, three bathrooms, a garage and a nice enough number of rooms. Even though the plot was large, it did not really have a garden. It had the pool, and tiles and rocks and some cactuses on the side. Andy commented that neither I nor my mother would survive the winding road. I am uncertain if his statement was correct. But I reluctanly gave up on the house of God. It still had the 80 km drive to work, at 155 000 euros it was almost twice as expensive as the one I saw with Esther, it did not need repairs, but it was far from schools. It is sold by now to a person who surely has a larger ego than me. How did I get to the Villa of God without a car? The realtor drove us. They are not supposed to, but they made an exception. They are the only one who did that from all the realtors I have met to date.
why do I want a house with a garden? It makes it easier with the children. My mother is older now. I have work to do from time to time. So, if they have a place to play in that is not a park, it's much easier. One could cook or work a bit and still supervise them while they play in the garden.
Then there was a lovely house on the beach of similar size as the villa of God and slightly cheaper in price only in a more accessible location and on the beach. I made an offer on that one. There was another buyer, who had priority because they had been first, and so he increased his bid and got it. I am not sure what would have happened if my offer had been accepted. However, at the hotel Andy was worried and resentful and said that I was taking all his savings and buying a nice house on the beach for myself (and his three children whom my father supported for the past four years so that he could have those savings). The parenthesis is a part that he tends to forget. He also forgets that I have a job near here and need a place to live. Anyhow, it would have been a good purchase because it had several bedrooms, and a garage, a garden, and it was on the beach, and two to three kilometers from a direct train to Barcelona, but we did not get it. If our offer had been accepted, we would have found a way to pay for it. I am not sure what that way would have been, but we would have made it somehow.
Soon after that failed Andy left, and the one year old and I remained as the main house hunters. A few days later I had my NIE appointment. It was past the middle of September. The NIE is the number that identifies people in Spain. Without it, people don't exist here. I was litereally told that by several people -- one of whom was undergoing the NIE process himself. I therefore came into existence at the age of 39 (my children don't exist yet; they cannot for another month or so until I get an signed, electronic copy of my contract, which can only be obtained two weeks after I start work, and make three more NIE appointments). I will make 2674.08 euros per month. Out of these, I will pay 19% tax this year, and perhaps a little less next year. The children don't count even if they did exist because I will at first be a non-resident for tax purposes. I don't get any money for moving expenses -- other than perhaps a one way plane ticket. None of my hotel or other bills will be reimbursed. They amount to more than 3000 euros to date. The plane ticket is perhaps 100 euros.
Salaries are not large in Spain -- unless one has a fancy position, e.g., ICREA or some named investigator, which I do not have. Fancy positions are rare, and not awarded to women with small children. The children don't matter per say, but career breaks are not really considered as breaks in the academia. One is supposed to work through them, and publish, and give seminars. When one does not do enough, they are judged accordingly.
What houses in Spain have in common is the concrete. Very few have gardens that are not full of tiles and concrete. This is because here it does not rain much, and unless one has big trees, which most have cut, you cannot have vegetation that is not cactuses without watering it daily. Of course, it would be good for the environment to have trees everywhere but it's easier not to for practical resons. Trees have roots that might ruin the foundation of the house. Also, trees have some form of leaves, which produce trash that has to be cleared away. So, it's much easier to be surrounded by rocks and concrete with perhaps a few cactuses in-between. I did find a few houses with nice gardens with trees, but they were all over 100,000 with one at 85,000, but that one does not have water or power. It says a solar panel and a water tank would have to be installed. I have not seen it since I do not have a car yet. It has a beautiful building with thick rock walls. It looks very pretty, but I doubt it is close to schools or to the train station.
Empowered by the knowledge my vast salary, which is less than I earned in graduate school at Cornell, I chose a house for 58,000 euros in El Vendrell. It has not been updated for the past 100 years. This means it has no refrigerator or washing machine, but they promissed it is possible to turn the power and water on. The electrical installation will have to be updated. The roof leaks, and the leaks have temporarily been fixed with some pieces of furniture under the roof by the current owner. It's lucky Spain is a relatively dry country. Other than that, it has three small rooms upstairs, a bathroom, a kitchen and a living room downstairs. It also has a tiny garden with a barbeque at the back. The elctrical installation is old. Overall, it needs some work, but it is not a ruin, which one often gets for such money. People have lived in it, and can live in it again. It does not have furniture, but that might be the least of its problems. So, I paid the 10% and I am waiting to hear from the realtors when I can sign the contract. I called today, and they said they'll let me know perhaps tomorrow. In the end, I did not spend Andy's money on a nice house on the beach for myself. I spend it on one (assuming the paperwork works) that is not so nice, and it's not on the beach, but it might do with a bit of work. It is ceilings are not very, very high, and we are tall, but I'll learn to make do. The advantage is that I do not need a loan, which I might not get as an imigrant with a poorly paid temporary position. And Andy has a permanent position, but does not do paperwork well. He almost always forgets to file paperwork to get reimbursed for his work expenses and has lost many thousands of pounds this way.
I hope I will sign the papers this week. I am afraid. I am less afraid than I was before coming to Spain. The men around me (from work and home) repeatedly turn me into an unwilling hero. I will be moving alone with three small children and a mother who has recently aquired heart issues after the passing of my father into a house that might have water and power. Of course, there are apartments that can be rented if this does not work out. None of the brave men in my life take risks themselves, but they are happy to have me do it. My brother complains I do not invest time and money in his future children. He does not have time to help and does not turst me enough to sign the papers for what we own in Romania. Andy is unhappy we've had the children we do, even though he does love them and he loves me, too, in his own way. They seem a bit like old dogs -- in that they are grumpy, but they are never grateful independently on how much I do or get done. Most dogs know how to be grateful. But what I do is never enough either for the society I live in or for the men in my life, and my children (the older ones I've already raised, for the younger it's too early to tell) take similar paths. They do as little as possible, and expect me and my mother to do a lot, and take us for granted. At work, the salary itself shows I am regarded as someone of little value and no consequence. I've always tried to do my best. Yet when I can't sleep at night I wonder what have I done wrong and why my best is never good enough for those around me. It never has been and perhaps never will be - at work or at home. I also feel very guilty: my mother is 74 and I can't offer her a nice, quiet old age. I know how hard she worked up to this point, and yet I ask for more and offer so little in return. The men I see are never plagued by this form of guilt or if they are, they never show it.
After some heavy rain:
No comments:
Post a Comment