International House Hunters drama

 As promised I'm back to tell the tale of our house hunt. And all the drama that has been associated with it so far. After our family grew by three in as many years our apartment was starting to feel small and Jose and I started discussing looking to move. In 2019 when I was pregnant with Carla we started to casually go and look at houses, mostly in the area where our apartment was located since there was a ton of new building going on.

It took a pandemic and having to quarantine in our 900 square foot apartment with five people and a dog (without being able to leave or step foot outside) for 6 long weeks that finally pushed us to make a decision. In the summer of 2020 we put our apartment on the market and started to seriously look at houses. We decided we didn't want another apartment but rather needed more space for our growing girls to run around and hopefully some outdoor space which was so incredibly lacking when we were stuck inside all of last spring. The pandemic really changed our mindset in that we need to have some outdoor area, whether that be a yard, garden or large-ish patio (regardless of how much work people feel the need to remind us it will be).

Jose and I sat down and made a wishlist for our new place:

3-4 bedrooms

2 bathrooms

Green space and access to a pool (it gets disgustingly hot here during the summer)

Chimney

Storage

Honestly, we were pretty open to a lot of options but would prefer to stay close to the girls' and Jose's schools so that they don't have to commute too long each day since their school days are already so long. I have my dream neighborhood that I continually look at to see if any houses go on sale and are within our budget but alas, it remains a dream. We started to expand our search into some of the peripheral areas in our town and I saw a listing online that looked questionable but checked a lot of the boxes of things we were looking for. So we scheduled a visit.

Jose did NOT like the house when we went the first time. It is definitely a diamond in the rough, like rough rough. But I can see the potential in the house. I can see what it could be if we put in some work and renovations. I just had to convince Jose. Which I did. We put in an offer that was accepted LAST July. In our contract we were given until the end of the year to sell our place which became more difficult as most people had the same idea as us after the pandemic and weren't looking for apartments. In the end, we found a buyer in January and sold in February.

Our hope was to be able to start our extensive renovations ASAP and be living in our new house in the summer. With that thought, my inlaws graciously allowed us to move in with them for what we thought would be a couple of months. So we packed up our lives into a storage unit and took the basics (clothes) with us to our temporary digs. That is when the problems began.

It turns out there was an illegal structure on the property. A chicken coop. That started the first delay as we had to get it legalized before our bank would sign off on our mortgage. That happened in March. We are still waiting for this paperwork to go through and it is currently July. We've been told it won't be until at least the end of the month. Things move slowly here in Spain, anything that has to do with the government is tricky.

Luckily about two months into our never ending stay with my inlaws one of their rental properties opened up so we decided to move AGAIN to have our own space. It was honestly great timing and I'm pretty sure the universe decided to cut us a break by giving us this opportunity to live in a house just the five of us while we wait and wait and wait and wait for our new house. We have unpacked just enough to survive and the majority of our stuff is in the basement still in boxes.

So here we are, stuck in house limbo. I've gotten to the point where I'm not sure what our next step should be, to wait for this house or to start looking for something new. I was so excited to be doing a renovation to make the house ours but now after so much time and being told it would be a few weeks longer for months on end, I'm frustrated and wanting out. Especially considering that we sold our apartment which had so many memories (Jose and I started our lives together there, we brought home our three babies there etc), where we had great neighbors, were close to our schools/jobs, in a growing area. Laura still talks about going back to "Mommy's old house." We took the plunge and are stuck. Hopefully this summer our paperwork will come through and we will be able to get things under way. Fingers crossed.