She Bought Her Dream Home in Spain
In this episode, I chat with subscriber Eden Mannucci, a management consultant who made the move from Austin, Texas, to Spain. She’s sharing her experience of buying her dream property in Spain, how the process went, and what her plans are for the future.
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Read the transcript here (edited for readability):
Would you mind telling us a bit about yourself, where you're from and when did your interest in Spain begin?
Eden: I'm Eden Mannucci and I'm a management consultant. I live in Austin, Texas, and I lived in Spain, as a little girl. My stepdad was in the Air Force, so I had the opportunity to live there for about three years from when I was eight until I was about 11. We lived in Calatayud, which is between Madrid and Zaragoza. So I think that began my interest in Spain. I've always enjoyed it, the lifestyle and the culture. I just feel really comfortable there. I introduced my husband to Spain a few years ago. We are interested in food and drink and wine and culture and art, and Spain really checks all those boxes.
Where is your house located in Spain?
Eden: We just purchased a house. We actually closed on it January 19. So the house is in Cuenca…if you draw a line from Madrid to Valencia, Cuenca is right in the middle. And it is less than an hour on the high speed train to Madrid, it is less than an hour on the high speed train to the beach. And, you know, those high speed trains, it's less than the cost of gas and parking in either of those places. Cuenca wasn't even on our radar. I mean, we had been looking, we've been reading your newsletters faithfully since you started it.
So we've been reading it and kind of thinking about places like Andalucia or Valencia, and we've kind of settled on the Valencian region. And we went over for a vibe check last summer…we're going to just get vibes. We're going to go visit these places that I've seen, some great houses online, but let's go see what they actually look like.
And, you know, let's go to some of these towns that I think sound really interesting, but let's go check out the vibe. So our base was in Valencia mostly, and we went around, and we learned a lot.
I realized I do not want to live in a Pueblo. A lot of the houses that looked great to me, the surrounding area or the town wasn't really what I wanted. My one requirement was that I wanted to have a home that was walkable to a lot of services and whatever. I did not want to have to take a car every day. Because we have to do that here (Austin, Texas). I mean, I'm tired of suburban sprawl.
So we had checked out Xàtiva and Buñol, Valencia and right around there. So in the interim, we'd been planning this for the last couple of years, and during the pandemic, I started talking with a few people on conversation exchange, because I wanted to improve my Castilian Spanish. One of the people that I started talking with was an archaeologist from Madrid. We've been continuing to talk for the last two and a half, three years. So he became the director of the Archaeological Museum of Cuenca. So we only went to Cuenca, because we were visiting it. Cuenca was not on our radar at all.
So we went to Cuenca, we were walking with him and I think within the first 10 minutes of walking, it was amazing. Walking up the hill, where there's this gorgeous, natural landscape, and I was like, “you live here, you get to work here, this is part of your life”. We were just really enthralled with the town.
Just to give Cuenca a little bit of a plug, it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I think it is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year of being a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It's a town of about 55,000 people, so it has an old town of Casco Antiguo. But then it also has a new town. So it's got multiple hospitals, universities, and over 20 museums, some of them are world class. Being situated as it is, it’s so close to everything else, it's really awesome. We just loved it.
Our house is actually in the Casco Historico, it's actually up on this hill, and we walk out our door and we're, in a medieval village, we walk 10 minutes down the hill, we're in the new town. Yeah, it's really my dream home.
I was planning to say, "Oh, we live in Cuenca, and no one else should come there." Because it truly is a hidden gem. It is absolutely gorgeous. And the other thing about it is that, it is where the Spanish abstract and contemporary artists hung out during the Franco regime. It's where they gathered, and it's sort of the heart of abstract and contemporary art in Spain.
Something that I've always loved about Spain is that combination of sort of classic and historic culture combined with all of this really innovative and cutting edge art. I love the juxtaposition of those two things. Cuenca is the home of the Spanish abstract art museum, amongst many other museums. 10 minutes from our house, we're walking, we're in a Michelin-star restaurant. 15 minutes, we're on a great hiking trail with kayaking and rock climbing, plus all of this other cultures.
With the buying process that you went through to get your house, what were some of the things that happened along the way and what was the most difficult part?
Eden: So I had checked with an attorney, kind of talked through some stuff and she was like, you don't need an attorney for this, you know, you can do this. So we hooked up with a real estate agent, and we have our friends there, and I really felt comfortable proceeding without an attorney. Mostly because we've done so much research.
There's so many checklists that you have, there's other things we've seen. So I understand the process. I felt pretty confident that we were dealing with people who were very straightforward, very authentic.
But the most difficult thing was that this town wasn't used to foreign buyers. They weren't used to foreign buyers, they weren't used to laying out everything very clearly about what we needed to do.
I think two things that were really hard, one was opening up the Spanish bank account that was difficult. I would say by Spanish standards, it was probably just fine. But it made me really anxious, the amount of time it took, the amount of documentation that I had to show to prove that we weren't money launderers, all of that background information. I think that the thing that surprised me, that gave me the most stress was sort of two days before closing, the notario started asking for things. They started asking for anti money laundering things, they wanted to see all sorts of documentation. So the day before we closed, they're like, we need this letter signed by your bank in the United States, that says you're the owner and all of this stuff. There's a seven hour time difference and I can't even ask for this until 4pm Spanish time.
So I was really stressed and I think if I would do things differently, I would have started that conversation a lot sooner, or ask that we start that conversation with it a lot sooner with the notario about what are you personally going to need. Because I kind of thought I'd satisfied the bank. And that I was sort of home free.
The notario wanted to see all of the proof of funds again, at the last minute, they also said, it all has to be translated into Spanish. And we've less than 24 hours here. In the end, they didn't need that. But I think that was the most stressful, it was just sort of the administrative piece of it. I felt really comfortable with who I was working with and dealing with, everybody's very straightforward. But that gave me a lot of a lot of stress.
Also, what surprised me is we went to go look at the house, and the owners were there. In the US, you go to a house and it's empty and it's staged, it's clean. So the owners were there, we hung out with them so that was fun, they were also really great people. We went out for drinks after closing. We're gonna have a party, when we get back there, they're gonna introduce us to the neighbours who are demanding to meet us.
How much did you pay for the house? Were there any unexpected costs?
Eden: There were no unexpected costs. I think if you educate yourself about the process, and you know you're gonna have to pay a bunch of tax up front, and all of those things, but we paid just a little under 300,000 euros. We started offering lower, but we ended up kind of settling on about 5,000 euros less than the asking price. Which I think was maybe a little high, but we need to get this done. This is the home of our dreams and coming from Austin, Texas, where people are actually offering hundreds of thousands of dollars over asking, it's a crazy world over here. So we were like, let's just cut through this and make sure that we get this done, but there were no real unexpected costs.
Our property taxes here in the Austin area are really high. So we were prepared for it. It's a big chunk of money, but we budgeted that, and that really covered the fees for the notario, the fees for the gestor to do the transfer for me, and the gestor only charged 80 euros to handle the whole transfer. I think that was just about it. There really weren't any other fees. But yeah, 10% was just right on target.
Do you plan to make any renovations to the house?
Eden: So this house is in great shape, we could move in and do nothing. Which is nice. It was built around 1930, maybe? It's old. It's built into the cliff. We're on a little outcropping. We are not doing so much renovations, just painting, we might change out some tile, but just cosmetic.
For the most part, it really doesn't need anything, we are thinking of putting in a bathroom. It only has one bathroom upstairs, we would like to have a bathroom downstairs. We have enough room to do that. So we're thinking of doing that. But that's about the only actual renovation, everything else is just going to be kind of cosmetic.
How big is your home?
Eden: It's 1,200 square feet (111 sq meter). Which, for us, coming from Texas, is kind of modest. So it's three bedrooms, a really large kitchen, and a very decent living room. But the key about this house that's amazing is that it has two terraces. So it is a completely independent home in an urban area, which is hard to find and it is walkable to everything. It has a lower terrace where we have one of the postcard views of the town, like that's where we drink our morning coffee. And then it has the upper terrace, which overlooks the gorge of one of the rivers that runs around the town. So we have a beautiful natural view on one terrace and so really, the house is all about the terraces.
So we kind of feel like we bought the terraces, which have this amazing view. We couldn't find that, the only other terraces that we found like that were in some houses that were over a million dollars. These amazing terraces that are probably almost as large as the house itself, the two terraces combined.
Behind us, so from us up until as you go up the hill to the Spanish abstract art museum, which is the first building behind us, all of it is scenic overlook. So our entire backyard that we don't own and don't have to maintain is a scenic overlook. To the right of us is also just a beautiful area that will never be developed. So we're kind of in a really sweet spot.
If you could do it all again, is there anything you would do differently?
Eden: I think the only thing I'd do differently is probably reach out and try to make an offer sooner, is probably the only thing that I would probably do differently. We were waiting until we were ready, and we weren't necessarily ready. We were just planning an upcoming trip and I reached out to the owner. But I would have just pursued it a little bit sooner. I don't think I would have kept this, what I think is like an American idea of “don't show any interest and be real coy”. I think I just would have gone for it probably sooner is what I would have done.
How long did the search process take? How many visits did you take to Spain? What did that look like?
Eden: We hatched this idea at the beginning of 2020. So during the pandemic, we hatched the idea that we should relocate to Spain. That was for a number of reasons. 2020 really opened our eyes to a lot of financial vulnerability, that we kind of had. So many things were in upheaval during the pandemic, and we just saw that Spain offered the opportunity for a very sustainable retirement. The health care, being awesome, and the affordability, and all of that.
I probably started looking on Idealista, back in 2020. But I was looking all over Spain. I really looked for a very long time. But honestly, June of last year, when we got back, I found this house. So I found the house pretty quickly. I never thought that it could be ours, because it's such a unique home. But I kind of done my homework, and I'd been looking at homes in Spain, I'd been figuring one of the bigger things, and this is what your newsletter helped with, getting an idea of what kind of properties are available. Trying to figure out, what the options are, because it's different.