At the end of September we were once again back in Berlin. The weather was still relatively mild, Monika and I had a lot of our mind and loads of work to do (unrelated to our “volcano lair” aspirations), and so we pushed the thought of moving to the Canaries out of our minds for a while. However, as early as in the beginning of November, the weather got utterly obnoxious very abruptly and with what seemed (and turned out to in fact be) a six-month finality. Thus our search for a flat to rent on Tenerife rose higher on our list of priorities with every passing week.
We put out lots of “feelers”, thanks to our newfound contacts on Tenerife. However, everyone involved soon started suspecting that, contrary to what all of us had previously thought, renting an affordable flat there would most likely turn out to be impossible. Our own online research proved the same: the influx of tourists to Tenerife towards the end of 2016 was shocking, even to the local population. All the capacities were filled to the brim, and even rooms that people there rent out en masse via Airbnb were relatively hard to find. It was obvious that Tenerife would, until further notice, be profiting massively from the fan-hitting shit and the resulting decline in tourism in the usual winter retreats of European tourists like Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey… Even Greece, to a degree. So everyone in search of some sun during the winter (as well as spring and autumn) headed to the Canary Islands instead, also thanks to a large number of low-cost airlines flying there on a regular basis. In such circumstances nobody was renting flats long-term under anything even remotely approaching passable conditions.
One after another, our contacts on Tenerife started coming up with the suggestion that the only thing that made sense at the moment was to buy an apartment there – while one could still afford such a thing. At first we thought the idea was preposterous: how were we supposed to come up with the money for such a stunt? However, the idea soon turned out to be more than just a pipe dream: at the time apartments on Tenerife were still relatively cheap, even shockingly so, in comparison to, for example, Slovenia or Germany. Of course, the comparatively low prices of apartments on Tenerife were the result of the Spanish real-estate bubble that had burst during the 2007-2008 financial crisis, and we decided to take advantage of the situation while we still could – as it was, we were already two or three years too late to really “capitalise” on the best opportunities. The prices of real estate on the Canaries would most likely keep inflating, at least until the next financial meltdown that is most probably in store for us all, so there was no time like yesterday to get a move on.
It did not take us long to figure out that servicing a ten-year loan that we needed would be significantly cheaper than paying our rent in Berlin, and, of course, at the end of the ten-year period we’d end up with our own flat instead of merely shovelling cash out through the window for the next decade or more.
Theory is often far more elegant, simple and shiny in every aspect than practice, and trying to get a loan as a freelancer… Well, I can only say good luck. I will deliberately refrain from blowing my lid and embarking on an endless rant about the woes of the precariat in the brave new millennium at this point, because I’m so fed up with the issue that I don’t even want to write about it. Instead I’ll just say that after lengthy and frustrating negotiations, involving numerous complications, a load of paperwork and a fine selection of catch-22s, we managed to get a loan. We also liquidated our life insurance savings accounts back in Slovenia.
Finally we bought one-way tickets to Tenerife: at the beginning of January (after the Christmas and New Year frenzy would be over), we’d be looking for an apartment to buy. It was about time to start reading up on all the legal and bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo involved in such a transaction, as well as looking for flats for sale online, so that we’d get to Tenerife armed with at least the basic information.
