Living in Spain for non Spaniards Good/Not so good?

Spain is bankrupt... so probably a nice time to buy

I just moved back after living on the Costa Blanca for 2 years....

I will book mark this and answer in the morning - Too much Indian food and beer tonight to answer anything seriously.

teencat is looking for a flatmate

I've seen some nicely priced properties, just wondering where the catch is.

That'd be great. Very much appreciated!

Having teencat as flatmate would probably be very entertaining
(if he had an on/off switch).

he has - it's called alcohol

I've just moved from Alicante up to Asturias. {North on the Atlantic Coast}

the costa blanca is suffering from massive unemployment, big rise in crime due to eastern euro gangs and gangs like the latin kings, and atm they cant afford to pay the electricity bills for schools.

Valencia, the province the costa blanca is in, is corrupt as fuck and keep putting local taxes up.

Yep houses are cheap there but still going down, the catch.. pick one there's alot to choose from. Make sure the house is legal for a start. If its new check its actually finished, where it is. they love to stick giddies in the middle of nowhere.

I know of one or two people over there. from what they say, if there is any problems or trouble, the authorities will ALWAYS back the locals. (basically the exact opposite of the UK really!)

It was always my dream to setup an Voyeur Spy cam villa in Ibiza. Perfect for shootings and pumping some extra capacity to the web. I know what girls earn there as dancers and its shit. Most of the girls go there to dance just to be on the Island

Are you fucking serious? Are things that bad over there too?

At least gas is 30cents/l cheaper than this side of the border ...

Thank you, nice little summary there.

I noticed many places for sale are in gated communities, would that be advisable?

As the Costa Blanca area sounds a little off, any other areas that you could recommend that are warm all year round?

Never been in Costa Blanca nor Valencia, but in general, Spain is a good place to live IF YOU HAVE MONEY. If you have your own income source and/or plan to provide jobs, they will receive you with open arms. Now, if you plan to take 1 euro off any of them... be ready for trouble.

On the legal side, they're annoying as hell, everything needs to be done 10 times, everything needs a new paper or a new sign or a photo of the Pope dancing the jota, so just save yourself headaches and hire a lawyer (some are very cheap and for common stuff you won't need much more than that) and they will do what you need... in 2 or 3 months. But at least it's 2 or 3 months you didn't waste.

Also, places close to sea tend to be more expensive and the interior of Spain is cheaper but can be hot as hell. But if that's not an issue, you can find nice villas and houses for little money.

A tip: there are a lot of old small towns that have no young people because they run away to bigger cities, so those towns are left with huge houses. If you go there, you can get a great big house AND become the king of the town since their inhabitants want people to live there. If you don't need the noise of cities, that's something you can look for, some of those towns are just 1 hour or less of big cities.

I actually live in Spain since 2 months. I am in Costa del sol.

I wanted to buy something last year in Alicante and I decided that it was a better idea to try it out before I buy.

I will stay here probably around one year, just to know how the four seasons are here.

Until now, 2 things are very unpleasant:

1 - The spanish are very unsympatic - It think that they hate tourists
(Even if I speak spanish)

2 - The internet incredibly slow

I will most probably never buy anything here.