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This is a generic tip, but if buying property in Spain, your Spanish lawyer can and will assist you in getting a local account in order to pay taxes, utilities, etc.
The latest offering from La Estancia is a turnkey vineyard home. I just received notification in the mail. Too big to copy verbatim, but to give you an idea, here’s the cheapest offering:
1 Bedroom, 2 Bath
Total Living Area: 166 M2 / 1787 SF
Indoor: 116 M2 / 1249 SF
Exterior: 50 M2 / 538 SFBasic Package: $ 474,000
Turn-Key Package: $ 528,000I really like the idea of LEC. But for home prices starting over a half-million for the most basic of offerings, together with what are reputedly very high association fees, this is pretty steep for the average person. Even if one can afford the costs, does that provide value?
Note, that I’ve been working on this still. I’ve actually had better luck booking business class seats through a ticket broker.
I’m subscribed to a newsgroup for Rancho Santana owners. Last summer a few owners in the rental pool were complaining about a slower summer/fall rental season. This year a few of them are saying their rental sign-ups are at an all-time low. It’s my personal opinion that it’s not an issue of demand drying up but rather supply increasing, with the addition of the new “residences” at Rancho Santana, which are higher-end condos fashioned in the design of the Inn. And of course, there’s the Inn itself, which creates more supply.
Great time of year to get a deal on a rental if anyone wants to go.
Roger, my apologies. I’m not much of a Spanish speaker either. The easiest thing to get a halfway decent translation is to use Google Chrome as your browser. When you get on a Spanish website, Chrome will usually ask if you want it translated and do a decent enough job that you’ll understand what’s on the page.
I don’t think it would do anything for you to get residency. Frankly, I didn’t check out residency while I was in Chile. To build in this area, you’d have to really WANT to have a home sort of away from it all. Though frankly, it wasn’t too far from decent sized cities. For a vacation home (which is how it was marketed), I don’t know that having a place where the main attraction is one hot spring is a real draw. Though that said, all around there were all sorts of vacation developments with very humble bungalows stuck right up next to each other. So maybe it was the city folks’ idea of a back to nature getaway.
Just an update, as we’re only a few days away from leaving now. We’re settling up our final bills. The main expense in this trip has not been the flight, but the transportation arrangements. You could pick up an economy class ticket for about $1,000 when we booked; I believe business class might have been about $3,000 or $3,500. My friend and I both used miles: I was fortunate enough to get business class the entire way, and my friend is flying business down, economy back. The transportation was logistically very tricky. We could have rented a car, but this trip involved a lot of driving, and we wanted to cross borders, which wouldn’t have been possible in a rental car. There wasn’t much train service, and relying on a separate taxi in each town we visited to take us on to the next town didn’t sound too reliable either. We found a tour service and planned the whole trip, but it wasn’t cheap: a couple thousand dollars plus. We tried to plan it other ways and frankly couldn’t find anything better. However, with that price we have an English speaking guide, all costs are covered (his hotel, and his meals), so we don’t always feel obligated to have him eat with us and cover his meals as we’re traveling. It’s a bit of a luxury splurge. however, we did the self-drive in Uruguay and covered some very long distances, and it was pretty tiring and stressful at times. I think we both realized that while sometimes it’s fun driving in a new country, sometimes it’s better to just be able to sit back and sightsee while someone else takes over the driving.
Email the SMc team Brian, they will relay the message on to Tim. Could be that he messed the symbol up and it’s for B shares or an offer.
