Later in this chapter I will recount some of the experiences we had while we were looking for potential properties, but for the moment, if you are contemplating a move to anywhere in Spain you should ask yourselves the questions below.

TOWN OR COUNTRY?

For us the answers to most of these questions were fairly simple. It was not necessary for us to live right in the centre of town since we did not mind having to use a car. Town centres in Spain can be quite noisy so this could also be a problem.

ON THE BEACH?

We did want views. After all, one of the main reasons for moving from London, apart from the weather, was to have a view. We wanted to be able to see the sea and, wanting the best of all worlds, a view of hills or mountains would also be very acceptable. We considered front-line on the beach but very quickly rejected this as an option. The Mediterranean looks very quiet during the summer months. Then it is the cobalt blue sea of the holiday brochures. But it does have storms and we heard about properties which had real problems with beach erosion during previous winter storms. Any beachfront property needs to be built on solid rock which you can see at surface level. Properties built on sand where damp-proofing may only be a thick plastic membrane could suffer from damp problems in the future. We saw this at first hand. Cast your mind back to your childhood. You only need to dig down a few inches into sand and it is damp. Would you want to live in a house built on such a foundation?

Had we only wanted a holiday home, front-line beach would have been perfect, but on our budget we could not afford the type of beachfront property which would be totally secure in a storm or completely free of problems with damp.

DEEP IN THE COUNTRYSIDE?

What about a mountain view? We decided that we would like to be able to have this and if it was combined with a sea view, so much the better. We considered going right out into the country which is idyllic. We drove through miles and miles of beautiful open countryside with spectacular views on all sides. Our hearts almost took over the decision! This was a real escape from the rat race – absolute peace and quiet and no neighbours for miles.

Then, we stopped to think very carefully. Many properties we saw were beautiful or potentially beautiful but they were often at the end of a pot-holed dirt track. More often than not we were seeing the properties in lovely summer weather when the only problem is dust. But when it rains on the Costa del Sol it really does rain. The dirt track would turn into mud and then we would almost certainly need to have a four wheel drive vehicle just to reach our house.

Could we actually cope with absolute peace and tranquillity having been used to city life? Would friends come to visit or would they be afraid of the approach, particularly in the dark? Would we end up only having visitors for Sunday lunch but not at other times? Would we find ourselves driving all the way to the nearest supermarket to stock up and on returning home realise that we had forgotten the most important item and have to go back for it?

We rejected the idea of an idyllic country existence, no matter how spectacular the views. We were not ready to give up on civilisation and become dependent on well water, septic tanks and possibly even electric generators since many country properties do not yet have mains electricity. Some are just too remote and to install electricity could be prohibitively expensive since the owner has to pay for the cabling from the nearest source of power.

NEAR THE COAST?

So far we had rejected beach front and remote country properties. The choice was becoming easier but we still wanted relative peace and quiet with easy access to amenities. Therefore we decided that a home on high ground, close to the coast, with good views of sea and mountains would be ideal. But where and what type of property?

WHAT ABOUT THE NEARBY LAND?

We wanted views but we very quickly discovered that having views in Spain can be fraught with problems. We became expert at looking at properties and judging them not on what the view is today but how it could change in the future. Development on the Costa del Sol is such that any piece of land can potentially be land to build on. Readers contemplating buying should really take this to heart and make it one of the prime factors in selecting their future home. I will tell you more about our experiences in this area later in the chapter.

For every property we viewed we ultimately looked very carefully at the surrounding area. First, the property had to be right for us as a property but second, what could be built in the immediate area? The right property in the wrong location could be a long-term disaster. Did planning permission exist for future building and if so for what? Hill top properties could be a safe bet but if the land slopes away very steeply is the land stable? Even a steep mountainside is not impossible to build on. The rock can be blasted away to create a building platform if the hillside has views which could command a premium for finished property. Believe me, this is happening!

Properties on the edge of golf courses seemed like a good proposition. After all, a golf course is sacred soil on the Costa del Sol and there is no way that a golf course will ever become development land. However there is a negative to such properties. If our terrace is immediately above the 15th tee or the 17th green we will have a constant procession of golfers going past and the constant ‘thwack’ of club to ball while we try to sip our gin and tonics in peace.

In fact the only people we have met in Spain who are unhappy with their property are non-golfers who bought a front-line golf apartment. This option was therefore rejected. It might have been different had we played golf.

IN AN ‘URBANISATION’?

We were getting somewhere. We wanted views, relative peace and quiet, closeness to amenities and proximity to the sea. On our budget it was therefore inevitable that we would have to buy on an ‘urbanisation’. There was no way we could afford to buy an independent villa. An urbanisation is a community of owners who jointly control the development on which they live. A community offers just that – the opportunity to meet other people, many of whom will have made the same decision. Such developments can be villas, townhouses or apartments or a mixture of all three. They vary tremendously, as we soon learned.

Some urbanisations are almost totally holiday-orientated and we certainly did not want to live somewhere like that. We would be living here 52 weeks of the year and we did not want to find ourselves in a ghost town in the winter – but how does anyone judge what is residential and what is holiday accommodation? It is not really too difficult in an established urbanisation but it could be more difficult if you buy off-plan. If you view out of season you can see immediately how many properties appear to be occupied. You can see if you will have neighbours.

In addition, those that have multiple sports facilities, restaurants and bars are probably more likely to be holiday destinations rather than places where people live all year round. They will also be noisy late at night, particularly if the Spanish themselves holiday there since the Spanish go to bed very late. Out of season the urbanisation may appear to be quite quiet but what will it be like in July or August? A further pointer can be obtained from the state of communal swimming pools out of season. We saw some that had turned to green slime in March! Not a good sign for all year round living.

WHAT KIND OF PROPERTY?

So, having decided that an urbanisation would be our choice, the question was then where and what type of property? Individual villas on urbanisations tend to be quite small with very small gardens and built very close to the property next door. They are also more expensive than an equivalent sized townhouse or apartment.

Townhouses, in Spanish adosada, offer many of the advantages of an independent villa and often have a private garden as well as access to communal gardens. Some can actually be quite large and often have terraces on every floor. We looked at many townhouses and I have to say that we liked many of them but at the end of the day some had a problem – they are very vertical in design. In order to squeeze as much accommodation as possible into a narrow site they are built upwards and often have three floors. What happens when we get older and have to cope with all the stairs? At this stage we did not rule out the possibility of a townhouse if we could find the right one but after many years of living in a house we began to think that an apartment might be the ideal choice of accommodation. It would be all on one level (although we ended up with a duplex!). There would be less wasted space and rather than have a garden to look after we could turn to container gardening on the terrace, assuming we found an apartment with a large terrace with views. Our dream was to create an outdoor room. The first apartment we found appeared to meet this objective fully but it was off-plan and is the subject of one of the later case histories in the next chapter.

ORIENTATION TO THE SUN

There was one other major factor we had to take into account when buying an apartment and that was orientation to the sun. Summer in the Costa del Sol can be very hot in direct sunlight. Remember that temperatures quoted in a weather forecast are shade temperatures and are not always a true representation of how hot you will feel.

Our attention was drawn to traditional Spanish villages and towns. Narrow streets and shady courtyards afford protection from the heat of the midday sun – almost natural air conditioning. Our estate agent was very keen that if we were going to live here all year round including the summer months we should choose the right orientation to the sun. Her premise was that many Brits, starved of sun in the UK, usually want to buy an apartment which faces south. They feel that if they are going to move to the sun they must be in the sun. That is a grave mistake. Her advice to us was to copy the Spanish (and let’s face it, they have much more experience of living in the sun) and choose east facing. If the main rooms of the apartment and the terrace face the morning sun we would be able to wake up to blue sky, have breakfast in the sun but never have the sun actually flood the living area with midday heat. An alternative would be to purchase an apartment with a true westerly orientation. Then we could enjoy very late afternoon sunshine and spectacular sunsets but once more our living area would never be subjected to direct midday sun.

We took her advice and we now live facing east. If we rise sufficiently early we are blessed with spectacular sunrises. We have sun on the terrace until the middle of the morning but since the terrace is covered the sun never shines directly into our living area. We have marble floors in the entire apartment and these provide almost natural air conditioning in the heat of the summer. I should, however, point out that marble floors can be very cold in the winter months and we find ourselves covering the floor with rugs in the winter.

OUR FINAL CHOICE

Suffice to say, we finally found a large duplex apartment within our price range. It has spectacular views over a lagoon-style swimming pool and sub-tropical gardens with onward views to a golf course, the mountains and the sea beyond. It also has terraces which are almost as large as the living area we had back in London. It is one kilometre from the sea on high ground so when the doors and windows are open there is almost always a breeze, even in the height of summer.

Our apartment also has one positive feature which we did not think important when we originally viewed it – a glass-fronted, woodburning stove. Log fires are by far the cheapest way to heat your Spanish home in the winter. They are also the most attractive way to generate heat. There seems to be an inexhaustible supply of good firewood in Andalucia and a visit to the log yard will result in the boot of the car being filled with logs for less than 20 euros.

Yes, we have to admit that there is building and development going on close to our apartment, but because we chose our location carefully it can never be a problem apart from the actual noise of building work. Unless we moved to the countryside far away from the coast there would always be the possibility of new building. We need a car to get to the nearest shops but that is only because we are lazy and do not like the thought of the walk back uphill.