Siestas, Market Dynamics and Leaving Cali: An Interview With Lisa

This week we have two things for you. A look at why the Valencia property market is not heading for a crash (Probably and unless) and an interview with someone who traded Silicon Valley for El Carmen and has not looked back.

On the market side we get into the numbers. Supply, demand, interest rates, the different types of buyers keeping this market moving and why a soft landing looks nothing like 2008. If you have been waiting for prices to fall before you make your move, this is worth listening to.

Then we talk to Lisa Guinn. Thirty years in Silicon Valley, the last stretch at Google, and three years ago she and her husband packed up and left California for Valencia. We talk about what drove that decision, what the move actually looked like in practice, and how you find a rental in this city when you have no Spanish and no local payslip to show a landlord. Spoiler: At Stepping Stone Rentals we sorted it out.

Lisa is in her seventies, retired, pays around two hundred euros a month for private health insurance with no co-pays and no deductibles along with 175 for the Convenio Especial (We talk about that too), and describes her social life here as more active than anything she had in California. We also get into our sponsor the siesta, and why the Silicon Valley culture of bragging about how many hours you spent at work is not just unpleasant but pointless.

We talk about what thirty years in tech taught her, what she thinks has gone wrong with it since, and what the view of the United States looks like from the outside when you have had three years to think about it. The spoiler here is "It's different"

Her advice to anyone sitting on the fence: get off it. Come for six months. No decision is irreversible.

www.valencia-property.com/new for the blogs

www.steppingstonerentals.com for the medium term rentals