Final negotiations

We already thought we had a deal. We had 59 houses with 6 ha of land for about 340.000. Which was just a bit over our budget but we agreed on it. Then there was a complication that one landowner wanted an amount which was much too high and that an other only wanted to sell his land with an additional 5 houses. As we already were a bit over our budget we needed somehow that Marcelino would agree to take the extra amount.

As we expected this would be a bit complicated we wanted someone to make a phone call to close the deal. Yasmin did not feel comfortable doing negotiations so we asked the guys of biomimicry granada to make the call. They were happy to do it but they assumed it was real estate work and for that wanted a real estate fee. For us it was just one call so we did not agree on it. As we were out of options we decided to write an email.

As we had no financial room we needed to find some room to lower the price. As the land was from other parties I assumed it would be impossible to get them to a lower to price. So the only option was to get the price per 'house' down from 4.750 to 4.250 getting the total price up to 350.000. We wrote the email, Yasmin translated it and mailed it. Now another awaiting started.

After 3 days we got an email, cryptic and short as always but it seemed they agreed on 4.250 so the deal was done! Again :)

There was a signed contract but we had some adjustments and wanted a notary to look at it. We also did not have it clear; how a house buying worked in Spain and how we wanted to buy it.

After talking to quite a lot of people we decided to setup a company in Spain to buy the land and probably to setup a company in Holland to use it. So we needed to setup a Spanish company which is a SL.

Our notary told us we needed to have a so called NIE number. Without this we could not do a thing. So we also started to investigate how this worked.

And Marcelino wanted to add an article to the contract that if 90% of the land and houses could be sold to us the deal would still go through. Which is understandable as he was dependent on the owners of the land and if one of them would object, the deal would be off. On the other hand we did not want the lose some most important parts of the land so again we needed to discuss this.

As all this was difficult from Holland we went to Spain in February to hopefully arrange these things or at least get a part done.

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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 ...

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...

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...

ardbol

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