Renovation project - Difficult times

Renovation project - Difficult times

picture courtesy of
http://www.lovethispic.com/image/163039/when-you-face-difficult-times

Hi everybody, sorry for the disappearance and I hope you are all still here and ready to join me again.

We had not intended to stop writing but so much has happened over the last few weeks, that I just have not had the time and to be totally honest I also did not have the inclination most days. This blog has never been political but today I have no choice, we are not doing too well. As you are aware we have always completed our adventures and projects on a budget, we do not have big contingency funds for just in case, and at the moment we are at a just in case situation.

The house has not sold, this we cannot believe and I have spoken to the estate agents who have each said that since Brexit the sales in this area have plummeted.

Brexit has affected so many of us in France in such a bad way, mainly the uncertainty, but for some friends who rely on an income from the UK, that income has dropped dramatically. But this is not a sob story, it is as I said the realities of selling up and moving to another country and this is a reality, things happen outside of your control and there is not a lot you can do about it.

We have a couple of options:

1.    We can do what we had planned to do and actually work from our house, there is the opportunity to make a great income from renting out one half of the house, this means we could stay in France, we will have our five years when Brexit hits so will be entitled to apply for permanent residency with no problems.

2.    We still have a house in the UK that we rent out, we had always intended for this to be our pension (I’m pretty sure that with all the changes with the UK state pension we will both need to be dead before we can claim that) but we can go to the UK and sell it, it would mean giving our tenants notice which I feel so terrible about as they have lived in the house for years. 

But

We really want to go to Portugal and now we want to get there before Brexit hits so that we can be up and running and making an income so that we will be entitled to stay there. The whole thing is such a stressful mess and we have to make a decision soon as we are now running out of money, not a oh heck we are a bit short till we get paid but a big oh hell there is nothing left!

We really love where we are but we had always intended to travel to other countries before deciding where to settle for good, but now the time frame has been taken away from us, we have no choice, we have to sell the UK house. Luckily that is in an area that has very fast moving property, but not an expensive area, but more than enough to buy what we want in Portugal.

So as you can see and understand we have been hectic, we are now a lot more settled so I have the time to start to blog again, I hope you have the time to join us again.