Home Search. A much more pleasant term than “House Hunt”. But what started off as a earnest and idealistic search for a home, started feeling more and more like a frenzied hunt for a sought-after unicorn.
But first some context. My husband and I were incredibly fortunate with our living situation. We were living in his grandmother’s old apartment, as she had become too old to live on her own and had moved in with his parents. A few years before we started dating, Xavi had inherited the flat and completely renovated it (to the best of a 30-something-year-old guys’ ability). I have to give him credit, the flat was not done in bad taste. But to give you an idea, heavily reliant on white walls and wooden Ikea furniture, because then you don’t have to worry about things matching. My interior itch had just started itching, it was a small apartment, but we were more than happy as it suited the needs of a young couple perfectly. Then, the pandemic came. And as for many across the world, life started to look different. Two people working from home full-time. The dining table was permanently taken-over by screens, the bright light that we had so valued started to seem less bright given there was not even a balcony to be able to go out on in the darkest days of the lockdown. We started talking about what life would look like for us when we things went back to normal. Working from home, building a family, creating a healthy space for ourselves. And while all of these are good reasons, a big factor was also in that we had been able to save a good amount of money, and had always seen real estate as a key investment goal to set us up for the future.
So we set upon making a list, what was non-negotiable for us and what were nice-to-haves. It came down to the following:
- 2 double bedrooms
- 2 office spaces
- Terrace
- Higher floor
- Elevator
- Quiet bedrooms (we suffered with street noise in our last house)
- In the same neighborhood (Gràcia) or nearby
And all of this, of course, with a strict budget to keep to. We quickly learned that we were searching for a needle in a haystack. It seemed like everyone was looking for flats with these characteristics. We tried to be flexible, view apartments that only checked some of the boxes, visit some above out budget, outside our neighborhood, etc. Memorable visits include: an apartment in a beautiful Modernista building on c/ Seneca, one of the most beautiful areas of Barcelona, that checked all the boxes on our list, except for the fact that in 40% of the flat the ceiling was only 1.5 meters high (“You can put a low desk in and duck your head”). An apartment that had another building built in front of all of its windows so you opened the window and touched a brick wall. An apartment that was super dark, except for a large living room that opened onto a large terrace. As we were starting to feel optimistic, the realtor showed us where they would erect a wall in the living room as two sisters had inherited the flat and the other sister wanted part of the living room. Xavi began to allege that I wasn’t looking right, and to let him arrange some visits. The following day we showed up at a garage/workshop that had not been touched since the 50’s. As we ducked our head and walked-in, we looked up at the sky through the collapsed roof. The realtor told us to pick up our feet as there were lots of rats, and said that the fact that there was not a single window in the space could be seen as a “design challenge”. Suffice it to say Xavi left the searching to me from then on. The disheartening thing is that you would think that the aforementioned flats were all complete bargains. But no, not a single flat we visited was listed for under 420.000€. And these properties needed extensive, and sometimes structural, renovations. One year of searching turned into two, and we were starting to lose steam. Maybe we were asking for too much for our budget. Maybe we would just need to make our apartment work. Xavi said that he understood that I wanted to keep looking, but he couldn’t do it anymore, it was too exhausting. At this time, we were visiting about 1-3 apartments per week, for the past two years. He was right, we were exhausted. On spring break in 2022 we were with our friends in Austria, complaining about our home search, as I melodramatically announced that we were done looking. They listened sympathetically, and said what could be considered as the most predictable response to our struggle. “I’m sure the right place will come around at the right time”. I’m not sure what kind of witchcraft they spoke out into the universe, but the day after we came back from Austria, I saw a flat.
I wish I had an instant pang, a recognition that this was my home. But the truth is, the ad showed horribly. The main picture was of the living room, where you would suppose there would be the most amount of light. But this living room had a row of tiny windows along the entire living room wall – at shoulder height! – with a grate stretched across the entire length of it. The rest of the photos were uninspiring, a typical flat from the ´60s in Barcelona, lots of dark wood, hospital lighting, and pokey rooms. Even with all the this, the price was still over our budget. And on top of it all, it was outside the neighborhood we were looking in, it was in Sagrada Familia. I hesitatingly brought it to Xavi, who was not exactly jumping over the moon to see it. But I made an appointment the next day to see the apartment, which I had just seen had been on the market for 4 months.
When the elevator opened and the realtor opened the door into our apartment (I had never seen an elevator open into an apartment in Spain before!), we started to pay more attention. The square footage was there, the storage was there, the rooms we needed were there. There was a square terrace on the back of the house that was plenty enough for us. I hesitated when I entered the living room. Those small windows were claustrophobic. And as it was on the façade of the building, I was dejected thinking there would be nothing we could do to change this. And at that moment, as almost an afterthought as he was walking out of the room, the agent said “Oh, by the way, where you’re standing now used to be a terrace, and they closed it up illegally in the ´70s. It’s been grandfathered in now so you can keep it if you want, but you can also turn it back into a terrace”.
And that was it. The stars aligned, the vision became clear, and we suddenly saw what this space could be. The fact that it was in Sagrada Familia became irrelevant, it was only a 15 minute walk from our old place. And it hit every, single, box on the list, and then some. We talked to our mortgage broker, ran through the numbers, and nervously made an offer to try and negotiate down the price. At the last minute I submitted a personal letter from both of us, telling the sellers our story and how we could see our family grow in this apartment. After a few nerve-wracking days, we heard back from them. They were four grown siblings who had inherited the flat from their father and had great sentimental attachment to the place. They had received another offer from a company that wanted to flip the apartment and rent it out touristically, but they had received my letter and opted for our offer instead. We were in shock, it had finally happened. We had found our home, and it was more than we even dared to dream for.
Of course, we knew the space needed A LOT of work. But for me, that was the best part