People often ask me why I chose Spain. But it was more than just about buying an apartment, it was about planting a seed.

And after all of my research, I learned that Spain had everything I loved and wanted in a vacation home and a potential future forever home.

The dream started with Italy

When I first began dreaming about buying a home in Europe, I imagined myself in Italy. I’ve loved Italy for years, since the first time I touched the land at 16 years old on a visit with my school. Since a young child and learning that my father was born there, and learning about my grandparents life there. It’s the food, the architecture, the art, the landscapes, the cultural obsession with everything beautiful and delicious. Italy is one of the most visually delightful and indulgent countries I’ve ever been to.

But after spending time in Italy as an adult, taking my time to travel to different regions, talking with locals, and imagining my future there, something didn’t quite fit for me. Italian culture in Italy felt just a little too misaligned with my own values. While I met many wonderful people, I also encountered misogynist attitudes toward women that horrified me. It wasn’t everyone everywhere, of course, but it was enough that I couldn’t picture building a life in Italy long term.

A collaborative dream broken

My best friend at the time, Adam, and I had originally planned to buy a property together as an investment. This was back in 2021. I’d been talking about it for years to him and one day he suggested we buy together to share the risk and the rewards. We’d been friends for twenty-five years at the time and the joint dream was to own a little place in Europe where we could both spend time and rent out when we weren’t using it. For a couple of years we searched through Italy, France, Portugal, and Spain together through various trips and using online tools like Idealista. Finally we decided on Spain but had yet to agree on the city.

And that’s when things changed.

Just when we were ready to submit our financial information to the mortgage broker and get a mortgage pre-approval, Adam and I experienced a heartbreaking falling out. It had nothing to do with the apartment or the move. Like many long friendships, ours carried unresolved conflicts that neither of us knew how to address. Frankly, we were both avoidant in different ways and eventually the relationship couldn’t survive it.

Suddenly I wasn’t shopping for a shared investment anymore and that changed my budget considerably, but strangely enough it also clarified what I wanted.

Community-minded culture for the win

Funny enough, with the collapse of my life-long friendship, Spain offered me something even better, it offered community.

In Spain I found a culture that seemed to prioritize community over profit. Families gathered together in the evenings outside their homes on folding chairs and on the patios of restaurants everywhere I wandered. Neighbors knew one another, not just their names but their birthdays and extended family members’ names and all sorts of significant details. Life moved a little slower and it moved together.

And for me, as a person who deeply values equality, I also appreciate how progressive Spain feels. Younger generations, especially, embrace feminism and LGBTQIA+ rights in a way that felt welcoming and refreshing and heartwarming.

To be clear though, as a white immigrant, I can’t pretend to have a complete perspective on racism in Spain compared with other countries, but from what I observed, and in my interactions with people of color in Spain, the atmosphere felt more inclusive than some of the other EU countries I’d explored.

As for my other values, while nothing quite replaces Italian food, Spain certainly doesn’t disappoint.

So much fresh seafood!

Great wine!

Amazing fresh produce and the sweetest carrots, almost as sweet as the ones I plucked from my grandmother’s garden as a child!

Long luxurious and communal lunches!

And so many beautiful beaches of all types! (Though few with the powder sand and sprawl of Florida beaches but still, beaches! Lots of beaches!)

Finding “my” town

Now one thing I won’t tell you here is exactly where I bought my apartment. If you know me personally, you know where I landed. But for the public, I want to keep this little secret. And that isn’t because I’m trying to be mysterious. It’s because I love this town exactly the way it is.

It’s unapologetically Spanish.

The streets are full of locals rather than tourists (except for in July and August, which can be a bit overwhelming). Neighbors still know one another and talk and have coffee together. Daily life hasn’t completely transformed into the holiday rentals and souvenir shops that so much of Spain seems to have become over the last few years.

Fortunately Spain has been taking important steps to reduce the impact of foreign investment and excessive tourist apartments because the rising housing costs significantly affect local residents first. I genuinely respect those efforts and I don’t really want to contribute to turning my little corner of Spain into the next international hotspot. (Says the foreign investor who somehow believes she’s different. Um yeah, I get the hypocrisy here and I won’t make excuses for it.)

Where I ended up buying my apartment had everything I wanted: beautiful beaches, a medieval castle, walkable streets where I wouldn’t need a car, and a hidden cave in the mountains that took my breath away the first time I found it. Standing there, surrounded by ancient stone overlooking the Mediterranean, a rainbow sprouted far over the sea, and I remember thinking:

“This place feels magical.”

That’s when I knew.

Searching for the right apartment

Truthfully, I spent hours every single day on Idealista, refreshing listings, sending emails, and calling agents and talking to them in my broken Spanish. Eventually I booked an Airbnb for four weeks, rented a car, and spent every morning touring apartments within about 100 kilometres of the town I’d fallen in love with, all while working every evening for my day job back in the U.S..

And mind you the budget had dropped after my friend’s departure from the plan, which meant I capped my search at €100,000. To my good fortune, there were still quite a few options. And on the last day of my four-week search, I walked into the apartment that would become mine.

It wasn’t perfect. In fact, it was missing almost everything!

The previous owner had stripped out every appliance, every light fixture, even plumbing fixtures. It looked more like a shell than a home with horrible black paint on the living room walls too. But I could imagine the potential!

And damn, the location was perfect! Walking distance to downtown and the beach. Easy parking if I needed it. A relatively new building with affordable apartment association fees. And an elevator! And a view of the castle from the terrace!!!

At the time, there were no restrictions on obtaining a tourist rental licence, which was important because I knew I wouldn’t be moving permanently yet (or maybe even a while) and of course I preferred the apartment to help cover its own mortgage.

Ten minutes after viewing it, I offered exactly the asking price and the seller accepted.

Buying from another continent

Before I started apartment hunting, I’d already done a tremendous amount of preparation. That’s who I am, eh? I love to plan and prepare.

To get the mortgage preapproval, I had to get my Spanish NIE (foreign identity number like a social security or social insurance number). I did mine through the Spanish Consulate in Florida for just $11. It was straightforward and I relied heavily on translation apps for the paperwork because my Spanish was still quite limited.

I also worked with a mortgage broker in Spain to obtain a mortgage pre-approval months before shopping (started in January, got it in March, searched in April).

The mortgage pre-approval meant providing what felt like my entire financial life:

• proof of income
• proof of savings
• retirement accounts
• assets
• information about my Florida home
• documentation showing where my down payment came from

To purchase the apartment, I borrowed against my 401(k), combined that with my savings, and obtained a Spanish mortgage requiring a 40% down payment. While there are other options, this is standard in Spain for foreign investors.

I also opened a Spanish bank account with the lending bank, which lowered my mortgage interest rate slightly and even more when I bundled homeowners insurance.

Unfortunately, the purchase itself became more complicated because the apartment was under foreclosure. There wasn’t a traditional real estate agent involved. (I also didn’t use a real estate agent, despite my efforts to work with one. I think my budget was too low for them.) Instead, a woman managed the sale of several foreclosed apartments in the building and that’s who I worked with.

After my offer was accepted, I returned to Florida while the paperwork continued.

My mortgage broker coordinated with a British-run legal office in Spain that specialised in helping foreigners purchase property. While I had been in Spain searching for apartments, I granted the lawyer’s office power of attorney so they could complete much of the legal process on my behalf.

Looking back, hiring professionals who spoke fluent English and fluent Spanish while also understanding Spanish law was one of the best decisions I made! Seriously!

The surprise costs

Here’s what I learned the hard way: no matter how carefully you budget, expect surprises. The taxes themselves, although high, didn’t shock me. In the Alicante region, the property transfer tax was 10% of the purchase price, which I’d already planned for.

The biggest surprise came from the mortgage fees. I’d been told by my mortgage broker to expect around €500. They ended up being closer to €5,000!!!!!!

That was a painful lesson.

It completely changed my furnishing budget and meant taking more time to get the place ready to live in or rent than I’d planned.

And then, to my utter heartbreak, after finally collecting the keys in July 2023, I discovered the central air-conditioning system wasn’t merely broken. In July! When it’s 40° Celsius in Spain!!!

“Welcome to homeownership,” said the universe.

Building a home through community

The truth is that money wasn’t the thing that finished my apartment. People were. That thing that attracted me most about Spain!

So that July when I picked up the keys, I only had two weeks in Spain before I had to return to Florida for work.

During those two weeks, I purchased the basic appliances and furniture I could afford and got to work on what I could manage on my own. One day there was a note left on my rental car window that said VADO and my translations app didn’t help so I posted a question to a Facebook group for expats in Spain and this one act of reaching out led me to meet one of my favorite and dearest friends who lives in Spain, Mary Beth! She saw my post, saw I was from Florida (her home state), and sent me a DM. We ended up meeting for lunch and spent a couple of days together before becoming the best of travel buds. A friendship that evolved so naturally and perfectly, I’m so grateful to have her in my life!

Not so haphazardly, I searched for local potters and found that I was already following one on Instagram. The lovely Tamara from Taspe Ceramica and I became fast friends, and when I could afford it I bought as much as her pottery as I could to stock and decorate my apartment. Much later, she opened a pottery school (taller) and I’ll tell you more another time why this was another seed planted that fueled my soul in the most perfect of ways.

Also by sheer luck, I connected online with people who needed somewhere temporary to stay while waiting for their own apartment. I offered them my apartment for free for three weeks and in exchange they assembled IKEA furniture, installed lights, and helped make the place livable.

Later, another friend came to Spain for five weeks. Instead of paying for accommodation, she painted the entire apartment and assembled more furniture. And she got to enjoy Spain’s delights. I was excited to learn this was her first trip out of the country and her first trip alone. What a privilege to be a catalyst for such an adventure for a friend!

Then in early 2024, my parents and brother stayed for several months and slowly added kitchen supplies and tackled more small projects fixing up the place and making it comfortable. At one point my parents went to a social gathering for English-speaking folks in the city and they ended up making very good friends from England, who have become my friends too!

Looking back, every person left a little piece of themselves in my apartment, a fact that warms my heart so deeply. When I walk through my place today, I don’t just see furniture.

I see generosity.

I see friendship.

I see community.

Letting the apartment support itself

To help pay the bills while I still had my whole life in Florida, I rented my new apartment as a short-term holiday rental. It wasn’t about becoming a property investor. It was simply a practical way to help cover the mortgage.

I found a local cleaner who spoke English and Spanish and paid her to deliver the keys to guests while I managed communications online. It worked out well most of the time and the apartment was fully booked for July and August. Later, a friend rented the place long term and for the winter months, which also worked out really well.

With the help of my Spanish legal team managing the tax side of things, the apartment largely paid for itself when I most needed it to.

My advice for folks thinking about buying in Spain

First, don’t rush. Visit in different seasons. Some towns are wonderfully quiet in winter but become full with wall-to-wall tourists during the summer. Others feel almost abandoned for months each year, ghostly beach towns designed by the Spanish government to keep their Spanish towns Spanish and provide more housing for summer tourists. A genius idea, but not quite what I wanted. And if you’re going to buy a home in Spain, it’s best you are informed.

Second, research local rules carefully. If you think you may ever rent your property, understand the regulations before you buy. They vary enormously from one municipality and apartment complex or community to another. A lot of places outright prohibit short term rentals.

Third bit of advice: add another 5–10% to whatever you think your budget will be. Something unexpected will almost certainly happen, is what I learned the hard way.

And my most important piece of advice has nothing to do with mortgages or paperwork.

Build a community before you need one.

Join local Facebook groups. Ask questions. Introduce yourself. Look for local networking events and make friends with people who seem like minded. Offer help when you can. My experience has taught me that people around the world are often far kinder than we expect.

My apartment exists today because of friends, strangers, professionals, neighbors, and family members who each contributed something along the way.

Buying property in another country can feel overwhelming.

If this experience taught me anything, it’s that while money buys the apartment, community is what turns it into a home. And what a home it has become!

To my most beautiful fortune of all, the seed I planted in 2023 became a tree and three years after buying my apartment, Spain has become my home. More to come about this very big chapter of my life!