Skip to main content

Negotiation

 

As we were interested in the abandoned village we needed to see if we could afford it. On the website it was stated it was € 350.000 for options 1. Option 1 being 20 houses with an extra optional land. That immediately was our full budget. So we were hoping the price could include the land.

It was also much higher than our other option which was € 50.000 for 10 ruïnes.

When we got our tour the first thing Marcelino said was that the price was € 350.000 so it did not sound that there was much room to negotiate but we tried nevertheless.

First step was to add the optional land. As we were planning to create a food forest, for us that was the most important. 

During the tour he said it would not be a problem and within some weeks he had sent us the image below without any explanation.

Our guess was that the black crosses where the parts we could buy. So that seemed perfect. 

I checked the 'cadastral' website and it seemed that the land would be about 6 hectares. It was really a guess as some parts of the land were not one plot but a combination of about 10 plots.

First Marcelino came with some suggestions. The land including 20 houses for € 350.000. Which was doable but what would happen with the other 50 and still it would be a high price per ruïne. Some 'houses' were not even ruïnes but just ground. We got a couple of proposals with every time different amount of houses and it was not clear how much land we could get.

So after some emails back and forth I took the initiative. I knew that that was a fair price for the land, so we agreed on that.

Then the difficult part: what to pay for the piles of stone, I mean the houses. I compared it with some other projects and talked to some people like Marjolein and suggested to go for € 4.500 per plot. That was quite a jump, since in their last proposal it was 60 houses for € 350.000 which was about € 6.000 per plot.

The broker immediately responded that it was too low, that he had many projects where prices where higher but he said he would talk to Marcelino nevertheless.  

After a stressful week of waiting they came with a response of € 5.000. Which was getting there. I agreed for that price if it would be the north part only (about 50 houses) or to go for € 4.750 if it would be all houses.

Some days later we had a deal for the latter, all the houses. Now they could start working on the contracts. So that would be about € 280.000 for the 59 houses and € 60.000 for the land. A total of € 340.000. Add 10% costs to buy it and we would go just a bit above our budget.

Maybe a boring story to read but we were really happy and in shock about what we were actually going to do...




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The first week of work

After the transaction we had time to think about what we could do in the village, as now we are the owners. The next option for us to go to Spain was in the autumn holidays. Earlier on we tried to combine it with Spanish classes for the kids, but we couldn’t arrange extra free time from school, so we had to stick to the one week of school vacation. We thought about starting at one of the houses which is in the relative good condition, like getting a door, so we could close it and store stuff there. But we had no electricity or tools as we had no space to keep stuff safe. So we were kind of stuck in a chicken and egg problem. To get out of this we set up a plan to get a container which we could lock. But that would not be there for this vacation. Then Maaike’s parents asked: “Would it be of any use if we were there with some tools to clear away the burrs, bushes and so on?” Of course that would be great! We were happy that they were enthusiastic and by itself there was a plan to do ...
20 comments
Read more

El Vicino

In May we went to 'our' village to show it to the parents of Maaike. So we drove there and after a half our drive with a lot of corners we were a bit drowsy getting out of the car. And there stood a friendly man in blue overalls.  He seemed Spanish we asked Maaike to talk to him. But she did not know what to say. So we looked at each other for a couple of minutes.  Then he started to tell that the village is empty which we agreed upon off course. He also told that the village was being bought by some people. Maaike asked if she should reply and we said yes please do. After telling the we are the mysterious people we are buying the village he started to tell a lot of stories. His name is Gerardo. He was born in the village and now lives in Burgos and in the summer in Abajas.  He knew about the buy because he owns a parcel of land and did not want to sell. He want to keep it for income and only wants to rent it out. So we talked about that for a bit and as we were intereste...
1 comment
Read more

Finding the right pieces of land

When we first visited Bárcena de Bureba we where guided by the current owner Marcelino. As we where interested, we told him about our project Ardbol. We explained him that we needed about 5 to 10 hectares of land. He replied that it was no problem, he knew many farmers in the area. Soon we got an image of the land area (See image below) from Marcelino without any explanation but it looked promising.  We assumed the black crosses where the pieces of land we could buy. When I checked it on the Spanish cadastral website some pieces where quite clear but some existed out of many small parts.  After the price negotiation we where anxiously waiting on which pieces of land we could buy. In august we got a large zipfile with new information. As Yasmin could not open it and we where on mobiles we needed to wait until we where behind a computer, which of course added on to the tension. Finally we could open it. In it where 64 files. 60 of each house and 4 for the land. See the next imag...
Post a Comment
Read more