{"id":518,"date":"2016-04-27T16:27:57","date_gmt":"2016-04-27T16:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thousandchances.com\/blog\/?p=518"},"modified":"2016-04-27T16:27:57","modified_gmt":"2016-04-27T16:27:57","slug":"to-buy-or-not-to-buy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thousandchances.com\/?p=518","title":{"rendered":"To Buy Or Not To Buy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"To<\/a><\/p>\n

To buy or not to buy? To go for the land or continue on with our search?
\nPrior to seeing this land we\u2019ve arranged to view a few flats in Barcelona with the Sotheby\u2019s. So after a leisurely breakfast, thankfully out on the terrace enjoying the glorious sunshine, we set out to meet Tatiana.<\/p>\n

11.30. Plaza Duc de Medinaceli,1.<\/p>\n

It is in the Gothic quarter, not that far from our hotel. Got there early, so decided to walk around a bit, discover the surrounding area. Although the building itself was overlooking a square, and in the distance was the sea..the buildings, the street, the noise, the garbage bins, pollution, were all the right reasons why not to live there.<\/p>\n

I think we are spoilt. Having the privilege of living in the mountains, where the air is clear, makes us especially sensitive to any pollution. Not a city girl.<\/p>\n

The building itself was lovely, the developer kept the facade as it was, just renovated it. The floor of the hall was covered with cement tiles with blue motifs.<\/p>\n

Saw 2 apartments, both of them 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom ones, the only difference was the height of the ceiling, the top floor apartment had the lower one. Modern, fully equipped kitchen, bathrooms, however the bedrooms were extremely small.<\/p>\n

Were told that Spanish people like to spend as much time as possible together as a family in the living room, and they only use the bedrooms for sleep.<\/p>\n

Ya, I would say that too. Still I would like to be sure that I won\u2019t die of suffocation due to lack of oxygen in those sleeping chambers. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

The best part was the roof top swimming pool with it\u2019s green (full of algae) water. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Honestly thought that we are done, but Tatiana (an Ukraine lady) got us into a taxi and took us to the beach side to a new development.<\/p>\n

Met the developer at his office to look at the floorplans. A. stayed behind, decided to have a coffee instead. Considering that he was the one who wanted to look at apartments, found it weird.
\nThe gentleman talked nonstop about the buildings, energy certificate ( was quite proud of his \u201cC\u201d certificate, that is like an \u201cA+\u201d here ), the garage, how there will be a public garden next to it, about the view. The funny thing was that I understood most of it\u2026
\nFloorplans are floorpans everywhere. Give me a floorplan of a house and I will see it in 3D immediately.<\/p>\n

Nice new building, new elevator, fresh paint, laminate floor ( him explaining why a laminate is better then a wooden floor, yeah right, and I was born yesterday \ud83d\ude42 )\u2026after a while he realised that I am not listening anymore, chose to discover it myself. Tiny bathtub, smallish rooms, decent size terrace with yes, with the view of the sea and the streets with plenty of traffic.<\/p>\n

This 4 bedroom property was over 1.1 million euro, to acquire a parking space in the garage would have been an additional 28000.<\/p>\n

I did give it a try. We all tried. But apartments are not for us.
\nWalked all the way home on the beach only stopping to have lunch at a small restaurant. Don’t even know the name, not worth mentioning anyways, very chewy calamari rings ( you should only use small squids, otherwise you end up with rubber).<\/p>\n

Got a call that the owner refused the 450, sticking to 490.
\nBy 5 pm. A. offered the full asking price.
\nBy 6 pm. we got the letter of intent.
\nBy 7 pm. we had it signed and returned.
\nBy 8 pm. we were at the 15nits. Another great place with a hostess like a teacher, telling us off for not waiting patiently enough for our roasted leg of lamb. Loved the place nevertheless.
\nTheir delicious avocado cream , hommos, , grilled goat cheese with quince jelly\u2026, finishing off again with their catalan style dessert.
\nWere we celebrating? Not quite.
\nNot quite sure what we are getting ourselves into.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To buy or not to buy? To go for the land or continue on with our search? Prior to seeing this land we\u2019ve arranged to view a few flats in Barcelona with the Sotheby\u2019s. So after a leisurely breakfast, thankfully out on the terrace enjoying the glorious sunshine, we set out to meet Tatiana. 11.30. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,28,26,36,72,8],"tags":[65,17,30,67,37,7,66],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barcelona","category-family","category-holiday","category-property","category-sitges","category-travelling","tag-barcelona","tag-beach","tag-father","tag-moving","tag-property","tag-restaurant","tag-spain","has-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thousandchances.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thousandchances.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thousandchances.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thousandchances.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thousandchances.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thousandchances.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":520,"href":"https:\/\/thousandchances.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions\/520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thousandchances.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thousandchances.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thousandchances.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}