We list expat stories of their move to the town of Ciudad Quesada on the Southern Costa Blanca.
We are Stan and Sandra West from the Aberdeen area in Scotland. We decided a long time ago that we were definately born in the wrong country. We originally planned to move to Western Australia but after visiting there a few times, we realised that it was just too far for family to visit us.
We had holidayed in Spain many times previously, but first came to Spain looking for a home around six years ago. It was on one of these €99 weekend breakes and it was a bit of a farce. They did not show us anything we really liked but tried to pressurise us into putting a deposit down on a holiday home in Spain.
However, on this €99 weekend, we did meet a very nice guy from QSD in Quesada. We swopped phone numbers and email addresses and told him we would be back at a future time.
This we did. We also used other Real Estate people in our search for our Casa and we must have viewed around 70 properties. We eventually narrowed the search area down to Quesada after having looked fom La Zenia in the South to El Altet in the North and Fortuna in the West.
While at home in Aberdeen we spotted a property which looked promising in Quesada. However,when our Mr Quesada picked us up from the airport he informed us that it had sold the previous day. We were naturally a bit upset but then viewed another twenty properties before heading home again. Around three weeks later, our phone went and it was our Mr Quesada tellinmg us that the sale had fallen through and the property was back on the maket again.
We flew over a few days later and after checking out another dozen properties (just to make sure) we went ahead and got the paperwork done etc. That was in June 2008. We got the keys in October of that year and used it as a holiday home till December 2011 when we moved out permanently. We have had a lot of work done on the house and feel it is now our Casa.
We live in the Marquesa Golf area of Quesada and are very happy here although it took us a year to realise the enormity of what we had done. We are now the main holiday destination of a lot of our family and in summertime our house in never empty.
Stan West
Loved reading your review as we are thinking of coming out here but long term rental for 12 months to see how it goes, we are so excited and it was nice to hear from someone who is actually loving their life over there. Wish us luck on our journey.