Looking to relocate to Los Alcazares, pros and cons please - Page 2

We bought a 2 bed bungalow in Los Narejos 3 years ago. Quick run-down: no flooding, Aldi Lidl etc really close? Bars & restaurants around? Short walk to the beach, golf course 8 mins by car, easy to meet new friends. We love the area so much and are hoping to upgrade to a larger property in the near future. Good luck with your search.

Jeff

Hi Carol,

If you have a look on idealista.es most of the houses listed name the street they are on which will enable you to work out what amenities are near by. Once you pinpoint an area/street you can then do further research about flooding etc, and being able to ask on this forum about a specific street may garner more information.

We bought in Santiago de la Ribera which is perfect for us but it’s more Spanish than neighbouring areas such as LA and Los Narejos.....I noticed a couple of weeks ago when driving through LN lots of street improvements have been made and it’s looking pretty smart.

I’m not so sure property prices have fallen, friends of ours are looking and don’t see any evidence of reductions but I could be wrong....

Good advice is to visit before buying, rent a week here and there or stay in local hotels to get a feel for the different places.....good luck with it all, it’s an exciting time for you.

In our late 50's we brought a house in El Carmoli which is 4 miles from LA. Property a lot cheaper than LA so you get more for your money, being situated on a hill we don't have to worry about flooding and with it being a proper Spanish village it is never dead in winter like some locations. Here you can get a nice large 2 bed 2 bathroom house on a pleasant street for 80,000 euros. Take a look.

Andy

We have just returned from a couple of months in the UK - a break from the "downtown Bombay" humidity and heat of the summer. We were surprised at the prices and very poor stock in the supermarkets here compared to Morrisons and Asda, frustrated at the difficulty of getting some action on the insurance company dealing with damage from an attempted break-in (at least with someone with enough English to help along with my Spanish), pleased at how supportive our Spanish neighbours have been, happy to be in the sun, feeling safer with the general acceptance of Covis as a threat and the masks and social distancing measures. It was a relief to have health care without a language barrier (although we found that nearly every consultation was a telephone one like here).

We have lived in Spain for over 15 years and seen the minuses climb to exceed the plusses, so perhaps think really hard about just why you want to move here. I will not go into all the frustrations we have had with the Spanish bureaucracy and inefficiencies in the administration...

Hi Jeff,

We overwintered in Los N for 3 years.  Every word is true.  Lovely place to live.  Everything so convenient.

Hi Anne

Yes. We use the place to over-winter and go out maybe for a couple of weeks in the high season. We play Padel which is a mix between tennis and squash. Very easy for any level of player to enjoy.

There is a Monday meeting in LA where you can meet people who have plenty of experience to help with things like the Spanish burocracy.

I think the only other thing I would mention is that I would always look for a property with air conditioning or factor in the cost of installation if not.

Jeff

just like to thank everyone for there fantastic, invaluable comments, you just cant buy this.

 If everyone is as good as you all have been I cant wait to relocate to the Mar Menor area,

Thanks guys, Will take all your advice onboard and when we get to our final decision we will ask for your reassurance.

Hi Carol,

We relocated from the UK to Los Alcázares on a permanent basis in December 2019. We are in our late 50’s and retired. Before we purchased on Puerto Marina, we had a good look around the surrounding area’s. We chose our location because of the convenience of everything. It’s only a ten minute walk to the beach and sea front to have a nice walk. Choice of four super markets all 5-10 mins walk. As with a lot of the towns it does go quieter in the winter, but there are still plenty of places still open to go out to eat and drink. As you said about Los Alcázares being flat, which makes it nice to go out for a walk or bike ride. There are two Golf courses, located at each end of the town. A lot of the worst of the flooding occurred in the old town, so if you buy make sure you ask the question about flooding. So far we our enjoying the weather, the life style and have no regrets. Hope this helps.

Regards 

Andrew

Just to add my two-pennyworth to the conversation, my hubby and I have lived in the Canary Islands for 37 years. We first lived in Tenerife for just over 21 years and then moved over to Lanzarote, where we are now just arriving at our 16 years' anniversary. We both worked and integrated pretty well into the local life but now that we have both retired, we find that Lanzarote has very little to offer, other than the beach and sun. We decided that we still have at least one more adventure in us, before we get too old and decrepit and so made the decision to move over to the mainland, to take advantage of the greater opportunities to travel about and visit the country. We know that it will be too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter and that there will be lots of mosquitoes (we don't get many of them here) and that we'll pay much higher taxes on stuff than we do in the Canaries but it's worth the risk. That was almost three years ago and since then, we've visited various areas of the Spanish mainland and discounted them for various reasons. Then two years ago, we found Los Alcázares and immediately liked the area, as it reminded us of where we currently live but a little more lively and with actual shops (standing joke, as our nearest Lidl or Mercadona is 37km away!) We viewed some properties in Los Alcázares and also in the surrounding coastal towns and then returned home and put our house here on the market. Our property took more than a year to find a suitable buyer and then Covid-19 halted the sale process. During that time, we returned twice to Los Alcázares to look at more properties in the area and in the end, settled on a new-build villa that we had seen on each of our visits, in San Pedro de Pinatar. Whilst we liked coming to spend a couple of weeks' holiday in Los Alcázares, we decided that we would like to actually live in a more "Spanish" town and we found our perfect villa in the perfect location for us. We're currently packing up our stuff, ready for our move over in 2 weeks' time and although our chosen property is in San Pedro de Pinatar, it is still under construction, so we've rented an apartment in Los Alcázares to live in until our villa is ready to move into, sometime at the end of the year. So I would agree with the previous recommendations of visiting the area and getting the feel for the different towns. You can't make such an important choice by looking at estate agents' websites, you need to get there and check out the local surroundings and then see what properties are available in your price range. Good luck with your search!!

Thats really interesting, we had holidays in Lanzarote for many years and wanted to buy a home in Playa Blanca, however, prices went through the roof and we couldn't afford anything reasonable. So we visited Los Alcazares during the winter of 2018 and liked it straight away. We brought a nice 2bed house for a third of the price in Lanzarote and by accident we now realise what a good move this was as southern Spain has so much more to offer. Also what would we have done in Lanzarote without a Leroy Merlin close by! Lol