We ended our sailing early this year hoping to purchase a home in the Pelopponese about 90 minutes outside Athens. We came back late August to close the sale in early September. Ha Ha Ha Ha!
My home sale in Toronto closed at the end of August and while there was some drama it happened on schedule. The buyers were selling a condo which did not sell but it worked out in the end.
The next task was transferring a large sum of money to my Greek bank. I had done this before when I purchased Spruzzo, but this was more money and I had had one bad wire transfer experience which made me more nervous this time, plus the Canadian $ was dropping like a rock (thanks orange guy). It is not fun having a large amount of $$$ in the void for several days while it goes between banks. The actual transaction takes seconds: the time is added by Canadian anti-money-laundering people who take a few days to bother looking at the transaction.
ANYWAY the money shows up, big relief, and now we are trying to close the transaction in Greece. If you are non-Greek and you think you know how a Greek real-estate transaction happens, you are wrong. There is no down-payment and no signed contract. (We gave them a down-payment to make me feel better.) Also, your Greek real-estate agent may show you homes that are impossible to buy. Greek property is often modified (houses made bigger, moved, etc without permission) and this makes them illegal. (Anything bad you’ve heard about Greek bureaucracy is likely true and understated.) Usually the owner can pay a fine to legalize them….but not always. Also, the agreement is verbal until it is finalized by a Notary, and our Notary (who Victoria went to school with) was MIA for most of September. There are not many of them (appointed by the government) and we had to use this one.
We wanted to buy. The sellers wanted to sell. Both of our lawyers were standing by……didn’t help. Missing notary. Long story short it was the second last day of Setptember before the transaction happened. Interesting process: everyone gets in a room, buyers, sellers, lawyers; the contract is projected on a screen, and the notary reads the entire contract out loud. The deal was signed and we moved in. The house is a few km from the ocean (nice ocean view). We are up in the mountains in a valley (nice mountains around). There are 2 houses nearby but otherwise it is very rural with farms everywhere. It is so quiet you can hear things happening far, far away. There are definitely coyotes: sometimes at night they decide to all howl and there are dozens and dozens singing all around (The first time I heard them I thought they might be kids pretending to be wolves…..that’s exactly what they sound like).
The house (and the houses nearby) were built as Greek cottages for people living in and nearby Athens who want somewhere nice to go in the summer. The house was built but not used very much as the previous owners became too old (a bit sad for them). It was constructed to be used year round (has heating) and had a bit of furniture. Victoria had all of her furniture and belongings in storage shipped here.
As I said in the title, our house has no address! There are 3 little villages nearby and we mention the closest and make up some address. I’ve started using the Google Maps Open Location Code but I’m not sure the local couriers use it. They call Victoria and she gives them directions, and from the hill we can watch them approach on the local roads. One of the delivery services just drops packages off for me at the local bakery! BTW it is quite a good bakery and 5 minutes away. I’m now friends with the baker.
The first surprise is that we noticed that the water did not work well on the upper floor. The water pressure (town water) is too low, so we have a 1000L tank with a pump. The pump was strong enough, but the controller (near the pump) could not measure the pressure drop when an upstairs faucet was turned on. We replaced the controller with a more expensive one that works, and a few weeks after the pump burned out. What is it with me and water pumps? Did I abuse one in a prior life? Did I pee in a Roman aquaduct? We just got a very expensive looking water pump (good for a 10 story building!) and now all is good again.
My first job was mounting the Starlink antenna properly. We had it lying outside on the ground (worked ok) but it needed a proper antenna mount and pole which I installed and looks reasonably professional. Starlink works great almost always. We then discovered that wi-fi signals don’t like concrete. Greek homes are all concrete, so the next investment was setting up a wi-fi mesh system with a node on each floor, which now works quite well. (I had to tune it a bit to support 4K streaming for out new TV 😉 The next few weeks had me assembling furniture Victoria purchased (some expensive and easy, others cheap and horrible) and daily trips to local garbage bins to dump all of the waste that a move generates.
So we have town water, a septic system and a bunch of olive trees. I am looking forward to getting olive oil this year from the trees. We have a diesel burner and hot-water radiator system that I’m hoping to replace with 20x400W solar panels and a heat-pump but we will see about that. Greece has under-invested in solar and I want to be the change 😉
Adventures on Spruzzo 