Step too far
The last couple of days we have had a flurry of house viewings.
This involves at least 2 hours of intense housework and the children all know their places now. Erikita knows she has to close her window an hour before the potential buyers arrive. This is to prevent them from hearing her shrill voice scream, ” THEY ARE HERE” when she sees their car arrive. Also prevents them from hearing my son’s commentary on their car….
Conrado knows he has to hide his pants from the previous month dotted around his bedroom floor, somewhere out of sight. I found a kitchen chair in his wardrobe today. I didn’t have time to ask him why and just prayed the estate agent didn’t open up the wardrobe door and suffer concussion and choke on any bad smells…
Gin Gin has to de-clutter her room. It takes about 48 hours. She also then need to water her plants on the patio and try to revive the withered orange tree and dead geraniums so that her outside terrace looks attractive. It doesn’t….
They then sit at their desks like “Perfect Peters” and not allowed to shout across corridors and up stairs at each other so that prospective clients think that concrete houses are sound proof.
The door bells then goes to announce their arrival and I count to 10 to make it look as though I haven’t really been spending 2 hours cleaning the house, head spinning like a mad thing, getting stickier and hotter by the second and that I already knew they had arrived long before the doorbell went. Erikita had her nose pressed to her bedroom window and has a loud voice…..
Then whilst the clients are in the house with the estate agent I hop from room to room trying not to bump into them, eaves dropping when I can ( this client was looking to knock down the ensuite bathroom wall as she likes open plan bathrooms….she obviously doesn’t make smells when on the toilet and doesn’t mind condensation), and I usually end up in the kitchen opening and closing the fridge door, re-arranging the milk cartons and labels David Beckham style, trying to look busy.
At least when the client goes the house looks spotless. I had even put out plates and wine glasses on the breakfast bar much to the children’s bewilderment. “Are we having a party?” Erikita asked.
Back to normal now, shouting, clutter and the house is ours again. Just how we like it…
Van Removals Marbella
If you are looking for a van to help you with removals in the Marbella area then I can recommend Paul. He can help with all types of removals, just something small like a sofa to be collected from a shop ( cheaper to hire Paul to collect a sofa from Habitat than for Habitat to do it themselves) or he can do larger removals as he has another man and a van that he can use.
His wife is a teacher here on the coast so totally decent family…..
Paul charges from 20 euros per hour. You can contact him at Vanmoves on 622793989.
Do you want to be on tv,Place in the Sun?
We are in contact with the production company that makes Place in the Sun. They are looking for people who are moving to Spain and want to buy an already established business rather than starting up from scratch. You will be filmed whilst the presenter Jonnie Irwin shows you five businesses and it will show you living and working the dream….
If you are looking to move within the next 6 months can you contact me.
Anna@helpful-ideas.com
Is this fair?
We have just booked a 14 day stay in an apartment in Marbella. The price was in sterling, the lady wanted it in euros and we paid a few weeks ago 50% of the rental price.
This week we went to pay the final 50%. The exchange rate has moved so she’s asked us for more money for the final 50% which is fine, but also is charging us extra now on the previous 50% which has already been paid. Is this fair? She says if we don’t like it then she’ll refund our money.
It took her ages to finally send us confirmation that we had paid in the first place. She made it sound like we were being difficult asking her to confirm payment. She’s advertised the apartment has full SKY and it only has 3 channels and wouldn’t let us pop around when the cleaner was there just to check it ( rented for my father in law to stay in during June, much needed holiday following a bereavement.) We want it to be perfect but we are now having the wobblies over this woman, advertising on holiday rentals as she really doesn’t seem to care at all. She’s also asked for a cheque for breakages saying she’ll tear it up if all is ok. Well, I’d rather have it posted back to me so that I know she can never cash it.
I bend over backwards to help people that want to rent our apartment, I want them to have a good holiday and if I feel the apartment isn’t right for them, then I tell them straight. I confirm payment as soon as it comes in and would never back charge someone’s deposit in euros or pounds because of a negative currency exchange.
Frankly we’d rather tell this woman where to go, but since there is only one property front line Marbella in the right location for my elderly father in law we don’t have a lot of choice and I’m not sure how long we’d have to wait for this woman to refund us our money either, if ever and what bank charges she would put through.
She’s Irish and probably has a bad temper, has eaten too many potatoes and has red hair. ( 46% of Irish people are thought to carry the red hair recessive gene.) So there you go……you learn something even from reading my rant, I mean blog….
12.18am and I’m heading to bed before being crotchety kills me. God help husband tonight if I hear a single snore I’m getting my….crocheting needles out.
No, I just made that up….
Come on you estate agents…
I am constantly amazed at the arrogance of estate agents. They have portals sending them enquiries with email addresses and telephone numbers and they wonder why they don’t get sales or rentals.
Well I’m going to print out everytime I receive some rude, badly written reply from an estate agent to a client. I won’t name and shame unless I’m really feeling hormonal, but I feel like shaking them, slapping them and firing most of the sales staff as they are absolutely DREADFUL.
This one came in today from a Spanish estate agency replying to a man who had asked if he could put an offer in lower than the asking price and would negotiation be possible. The spelling mistakes and gaps between sentences are all the estate agents own….
“Hii
the price is 99k, so no is the answer to such a low offer. Maybe 90k is possible
Thanks
Then we had another one today. A client asking if a luxury villa in Marbella was available for a week. The price was over £3500 per week. The answer was a polite no, it was not available but no other suggestions were made, no other weeks offered and no suggestion that the client should look at their wonderful website for alternatives. No phone call either despite that being made available.
Fence your pool
It is already law in France to have your pools fenced and there are attempts now within the Spanish Government to have the same laws passed in Spain. Either way, if have young children then a pool fence can give you peace of mind and if you have a property you rent out, having a pool fenced makes it child friendly and gives you an extra edge on your competition.
If you would like to find out more you can contact Advasol Solutions based in Estepona, a really friendly family run business. As well as pool fencing, they also specialise in pool heating and solar heating.
Contact information is info@advasolsolutions.com and their website is www.advasolsolutions.com
Advertise your property with Trip Advisor
I use Trip Advisor all the time if I am booking or looking at hotels abroad or here in Spain. Reading other people’s comments really helps me decide if I go ahead or not.
I have seen that there is a division of Trip Advisor called FlipKey which means you can now add your holiday rental property on Trip Advisor. They offer 60 days advertising free of charge and will send you a reminder a week before the end of your trial period to give you an opportunity to cancel it.
Trip Advisor is a site with a huge amount of traffic so it is worth a go if you are wishing to look for new marketing opportunities for rental and with the free trial you can really try it out before you decide to go ahead and actually pay.
I found it very easy to add my property. It took 48 hours to be approved and said it may take another 48 hours to go live onto the Trip Advisor site so if it works out and I start to get a huge amount of enquiries I’ll let you know.