Retiring to Fuerteventura – How We Did It

My wife, Sue, and I sold up in the UK before retiring to Fuerteventura in 2013. We chose to live in the north of Fuerteventura as that was the area we knew best and obviously liked.

This is the full story of why, where, when and how we retired here which I hope may help you if you are thinking of moving to Fuerteventura from UK.

Why Fuerteventura?

We started coming for holidays in Fuerteventura in the mid-1990s. This was largely because I had been once some years before and knew the winter weather was lovely. We used to come most years for a week to escape the awful UK winter weather, apart from taking the occasional cruise.

The next year we would look at holiday brochures to choose somewhere different to go but usually ended up agreeing to come back here as we knew we would enjoy it.

For a number of years, we stayed in various places in Corralejo and usually had the odd day trip over to El Cotillo.

In 2007 we had our first holiday actually staying in El Cotillo – in a one-bedroom apartment right on the beach. We really enjoyed the chilled atmosphere of El Cotillo.

Our honeymoon in El Cotillo

After living together for 17 years, we finally got married in 2008. We came to Fuerteventura for three weeks on honeymoon and stayed in El Cotillo, never dreaming that one day we would be retiring in Fuerteventura.

We stayed in a lovely apartment in El Cotillo, overlooking the lagoons and the beaches. During that stay, we fell in love with El Cotillo, making many friends who are still friends today.

Two days before the end of our honeymoon, we went for a walk and happened to look in an estate agent’s window. That was it; the idea came into our heads that we wanted an apartment there ourselves. By the following day, we had chosen one and made all the arrangements to buy it. Well, we like to take our time and think things through thoroughly before we commit ourselves!

Deciding to retire in Fuerteventura

We began spending more and more time staying at our apartment.

We each ran our own businesses. Sue could not take any training bookings for a couple of months over winter and, as I had staff in my office, and I worked from home most of the time anyway, I could work anywhere provided I had my laptop and an internet connection.

We, therefore, started spending from just before Christmas to the end of February in the sun, and even longer sometimes. Plus, we got away to our apartment whenever we could at other times of the year.

I think at that point, we both knew that a move to Fuerteventura was what we wanted to do eventually. Sue was actually ready to do it a year or so before me.

What finally did it for me was returning to the UK at the end of February 2012. The weather was amazing for February, and I spent 3 or 4 days sorting it out in the garden. It then rained for over two months solid, and that was it. I said, “Let’s sell up and go!” The decision was made, and the countdown to retiring in the Canary Islands had started.

That was in May 2012, so by the time we got the house ready to sell, accepted an offer and then completed the sale, it was the beginning of February 2013.

Achieving our goal of retiring to Fuerteventura

After getting some quotes, we decided to take much of our furniture and personal items with us.  The cost was less than expected and certainly cheaper than buying new here. This ended up being 133 separate boxes and items.

We used a company based here that handles removals to Fuerteventura, run by an English couple, to organise all of the transport. Annette at Woodside Cargo SL couldn’t have been more helpful.

We had lived in that house in Northamptonshire for 11 years, so we spent weeks clearing out all the rubbish we had accumulated over the years. Where does it all come from?

I made 23 full car load trips to the local recycling centre. We also sold things we didn’t need on Ebay and gave some things to charity shops.

Fortunately, when we moved in, I made the decision only to put suitcases and Christmas decorations in the loft. That was because when we moved out of our previous house, everything that came out of the loft, apart from those two items, went straight to the tip.

Packing up our life

Packing everything up when moving to Fuerteventura took much longer than expected, even though we started weeks before we were due to leave. Every box and item of furniture had to be numbered. Then, it had to be entered on a manifest, together with a description of the contents and the dimensions.

We began to run out of time. By midnight, the day before everything was being collected, we had hardly started packing up the garage contents. Sue helped until 1am then went to bed, and I ended up in there all night to get everything done. It was pretty chilly in there, I must admit.

A large removal lorry arrived at 7am, with two strong guys, who started loading up just as it started snowing. The UK weather was having its last laugh! Eventually, everything was loaded, and off it went to be packed into a shipping container. We used a British-owned company that specialised in removals to Fuerteventura called Woodside Cargo based on the island.

We cleaned through the house and dropped the keys off at the estate agents. Then we were off to a hotel near Bristol airport for two nights before our flight. As we had sold our cars, I hired one locally but with a drop-off at Bristol airport.

We become expats in Fuerteventura finally

So we arrived in Fuerteventura airport late afternoon and went straight to our apartment. We immediately felt like we were at home. Admittedly, having the apartment already made retiring to Fuerteventura easier. We settled into life here quite easily over the next few weeks. That said, it did feel like we were on holiday rather than living here permanently.

Sue started volunteering at the dog pound in La Oliva once a week to help make the poor dogs’ lives more enjoyable. On the third week, she told me that a lovely little black and white dog had been found as a stray and was in the shelter. The next week, he was still there and again the following week.

That meant his three weeks were coming to an end, so he would be put down. So, we adopted him on his last day, ironically April 1st. Sue called him Oscar.

We always knew we would adopt a dog once settled, but we planned to wait until we bought a house. Having a dog in an apartment is not ideal. Every time he needed to go for a pee, it meant I had to take him for a walk. That was 6 or 7 times a day.

He also woke up and wanted to go out when it started to get light. I am NOT a morning person, but I saw more sunrises during that period than I have ever seen or wanted to see.

Sadly, Oscar died of lung cancer in November 2021. I miss him very much.

We adopted Jenson in November 2014 when he was just three months old.

Buying a house in Fuerteventura

We started house hunting, fuelled by the need to get a garden for Oscar. We would have liked to live in El Cotillo, but there are no houses with gardens, only apartments and village street houses.

In hindsight, we could have made much more money from buying bank-repossessed property. There was a new development of 3-bed semi-detached townhouses in Corralejo, selling for just 75,000€ by the bank. We could have bought three – living in one and renting the other two out. They are now selling for 225,000€ each!

I would guess that we have made little or nothing on the house we bought after considering what we have spent on improving it whereas our house in the UK has doubled since we sold it.

Buyer Beware

Our preferred location was Lajares and eventually, we found a new detached villa we liked in a small development. We agreed on a price and started the process of buying.

The owners then informed us that they had decided to keep the one we wanted, but we could have another right by the road for the same price. This wasn’t worth as much as the one we wanted as it was overlooked, which the other wasn’t.

Then, when we were trying to decide what to do, I found out from another source that the sellers were trying to sell that villa to someone else for more. I told the sellers they were crooks and where to stick their villa, and we started looking again.

We couldn’t find anything else we liked or could afford in Lajares, so we looked elsewhere. We found our current house in La Oliva, made an offer and moved in in September 2013. It needed plenty of upgrading as it hadn’t been particularly well looked after, but it had a good swimming pool and a large garden with trees.

We have done quite a bit of house remodelling since. This has included knocking down a wall to make the kitchen bigger, a new kitchen, both bathrooms remodelled, building a garage and lots more. You can see some of what we have done in this post – our house remodel.

Some buying advice with the benefit of hindsight

Unlike in the UK, the housing market in Fuerteventura and Spain is generally not buoyant. The main reason for that I think is that to move from one house to another is very expensive.

For example, if we wanted to sell our house in La Oliva and buy one in Lajares for the same price, this would be the cost:

If the house were worth 300,000€, it would cost around 60,000€ in taxes, estate agent fees, stamp duty, etc. That is roughly 8% in selling costs and 11% in buying costs.

So my advice would be, if possible, to rent first, preferably in the area you want to buy. Don’t just buy a property without really considering it carefully first. We looked for a villa to rent for a year in Lajares after our original purchase fell through, but there were none available, so we bought this one.

To show how “lucky” I am regarding finances, if we had rented for a year first and bought, we would have had an extra 50,000€ to spend because the exchange rate changed substantially that year. That is, unfortunately, the story of my financial life though.

My thoughts 9 years on

Neither Sue nor I regret retiring to Fuerteventura. Of course, not everything is rosy, it has its bad points, but then there can’t be anywhere that is 100% perfect. Living in Fuerteventura is very different from coming here on holiday.

I often see on Fuerteventura forums people coming here on holiday and describing Fuerteventura as paradise. The dictionary definition states, “Paradise: a place of great happiness where everything is exactly as you would like it to be.”

When you spend two weeks a year staying in a hotel in one of the resorts, having fun every day, everything may seem perfect. But clearly, that is not true of Fuerteventura or anywhere else.

One of the things you will hear from friends and family many times if you do end up moving to Fuerteventura is, “You are always on holiday,” but of course, that is not the case.

Normal life takes over, such as shopping, housework, house repairs, car maintenance, gardening – and you may also have to add cleaning a swimming pool. The main difference is that you no longer do these in the rain and the cold.

The good things about living in Fuerteventura

• The cost of living is lower
• A slower pace of life
• No traffic jams
• The climate means that we live a more outdoor lifestyle than we would have had we stayed in the UK
• The healthcare is good
• It is very cosmopolitan, so you meet people from many different countries
• Informal living. I hate formality, particularly having to dress up. I always wear shorts here and haven’t worn long trousers since 2013.
• Cheap, good coffee everywhere

The worst things about living in Fuerteventura

• The top of my list is the way animals, in particular dogs, are treated (mainly by locals) and particularly the local hunters who abuse dogs
• The stone-aged internet – no longer valid as we now have fast internet
• Long-winded bureaucracy – the motto here must be “Never make something simple when you can make it complicated!” The Spanish have turned bureaucracy into an art form. Almost nothing can be done online, and absolutely nothing can be done by post. You must always travel to government offices to do anything, normally more than once.
• Online shopping. This is getting increasingly difficult as more and more things on Amazon etc (even Amazon Spain) won’t be shipped to the Canary Islands.
• I miss green and forests (but Fuerteventura does have its own beauty)
• The ridiculous cost of flights to/from the UK during school holidays

Clearly, the good things about retiring to Fuerteventura outweigh the bad; otherwise, we would have left.

Retiring to Fuerteventura YouTube video

You can now watch our retiring to Fuerteventura story on YouTube:

You may find this book useful if you are considering retiring in the Canary Islands:

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Moving Abroad Quote

“I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.” – Bill Bryson

If you are thinking of retiring to Fuerteventura as we have done, feel free to ask any questions. I will try to help if I can.

Other articles you may find useful:

Read the articles on the cost of living in Fuerteventura

Hiring a car in Fuerteventura

Driving in Fuerteventura