Turning a Stopover into a New Life

Transcript

Welcome to Mallorca Living with Helen Cummins!

Hi, I’m Helen Cummins from the Mallorca Living video podcast. I’m here today with Elysia and CJ Meyers from Colorado, who have made the transition to Mallorca. They bought a dream home in Pollensa and are going to share their story with us today.

You’re very welcome, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having us, yeah, thanks for having us, it’s a pleasure, really.

So, we’ve just met, although you feel you know me and I feel I know you, but please tell us a little bit about yourselves, your background. Sure. So we are from Colorado in the US, in Denver, a very mountainous region, very far from the sea, so Mallorca feeds my soul, that it’s so close to the sea, yes, so many beautiful beaches. We’ve been together for 15 years, just celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary, and we, I don’t know, we bought our place about two and a half years ago, started the process well before, initially falling in love with Mallorca. Okay, great, and I’m sure we’ll get into it, but, you know, we met more or less in university, and early on in our dating, Alicia made it very clear that she wanted travel to be a big part of our lives, and so we spent most of our

Meet Elysia and CJ: A Relationship Built on Travel and Shared Dreams

You know, twenties and early thirties sort of traveling around before coming back to Colorado to get married, and after, you know, the dust settled on all that, we started to start the traveling back up again, and that’s really what led us to Mallorca. So, seeing international places and visiting the water has been a big part of our story. From our research, we found out you’ve lived in New Zealand, you’ve lived in Colombia. Tell us a little bit about that part of your life because it sounds like you’re travelers, yeah, of worlds, of the world, getting to know. I studied abroad in Argentina, and that was the catalyst of wanting to live. I wanted to get my career started after college and then live somewhere Spanish-speaking. CJ, do you speak Spanish?

Yes, not fluently, but not bad either. Although I grew up learning more so Mexican Spanish, since I grew up in California, than like Spanish Spanish. But on our, one of our first dates, I essentially told CJ that I wanted to live in another country in a few years, and he was not necessarily on board with it, initially took a little bit of convincing. Did you have a passport at the time? Of course, yes, of course, yeah, we’re not one of those Americans without their passports. But the whole idea seemed so foreign to me. I didn’t study abroad. I had barely left Colorado, honestly, I mean, certainly for family vacations and whatnot, but to live somewhere else seemed, I didn’t know anyone who had done that. It just wasn’t on your horizon at that moment, right? But life was to change, yeah, because of her.

So as I, as I slowly convinced him that my plan could become our plan, I wanted to go somewhere Spanish speaking, but I compromised, and as we were talking more about where CJ might want to live too, he came to New Zealand, and so as like a destination, and so we decided to do both. Why not? Why do one when you can do both? And how connected was your traveling with your career, your professional career? Was it kind of coinciding or was it separate? We ended up having to put everything on hold. So when it finally became sort of the mission, the dream, we started saving as much as we possibly could. As many of our friends were saving to make a down payment on a home, we were saving to do this trip, and we ended up saving quite a bit of money, actually, it’s pretty impressive. And then for like two years straight, just lived off that money, really, we did. And you traveled for the two years while you

Well, we certainly, we ended up working in New Zealand. That was easier for us to get a working holiday visa there. So we just did some service jobs part-time just to sort of supplement, but we were really taking a bit of a break from like the career path, which again was really unusual for American culture. So what did you both study? What did you study at university? We both studied journalism. Okay. I know I wanted to be a sports reporter, and so we were both working in public relations when we when we left the US in our twenties, and when we came back, I decided not to return to that career, and CJ kind of pivoted a

Stepping Off the Career Ladder to Travel

Little bit, yeah. For anyone watching who’s in public relations, for me, there was nothing more terrifying than getting a phone call from a reporter, and you didn’t know why they were calling you. Okay. And thinking, what did my client do this time, you know? And so anyway, coming back to the States, I said, “I’d love to continue to write and storytelling and do all the things in marketing, but never have to speak to a reporter again.” So, anyway, when we came back, I was able to find a life raft at an old, old company with an old boss and mentor who said, “Come back, we’ll find a role for you here.” And so after traveling, it was, we were able to pick up life pretty easily, which again, I think was sort of a fear, we weren’t quite sure if we’d be able to do that after two years away. But we were able to resume our careers in life, and then we did the whole marriage thing and sort of settled in, bought a home in Denver, but that, you know, wanderlust, that travel bug was still there, and that’s when this plan started formulating. Okay. Career-wise, after your travels, the two-year, what did you end up doing? I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to come back and do.

So I returned to just as a like a therapeutic outlet. I returned to painting. I had always been a painter, but had kind of let that slide a bit while I was focusing on working my way up the corporate ladder. And so began painting again and serendipitously had the idea as I was painting one day to see if I could paint with wine. And that one thought snowballed into me trying to figure out how to do that. And now that that’s what I do. I’m a wine artist. You’re a wine artist. Wow. So I paint with wine. You paint with wine. That’s incredible. And you do workshops now. You give workshops, and yes, I love to. I feel like this is probably part of the wanderlust part of my heart that I love

How Wine Led Elysia Back to Painting – and a New Career

Trying new things, and I love giving that experience to other people, especially adults don’t often always get to try new things, and so I love giving the chance to try something new. So I teach small, shortish workshops to let others experience the joy of getting to paint with wine, since it’s definitely a unique medium. Do people start drinking their paintings at the end, or is that a

No, no. I do always have to tell people because I’ve got specific wine that’s for painting with, and then we’ve got specific wine that’s for drinking, stuff for drinking. Yes, so we need to keep it separate. But I definitely have had a few people try to dabble in tasting the wine, yeah, yeah, really get the full experience. No one’s ever that desperate. They can always get a glass from there, yeah, there’s more wine to be had, yeah, so I’m You’re in Denver,

You’re married, you have your house, and you’re still feeling this little bug of traveling, and Europe somehow is on the horizon. Tell me about how that came about. Well, in Spain, let’s say in particular.

Yeah, sure. So the first bit of travel, you know, the years that, you know, we called our leap years, we were really spending savings, and we thought, this isn’t sustainable, obviously, we’re not retired, we’re only in our twenties. So we thought, okay, how can we do that again, but maybe in a more sustainable way? And so we thought of all these different options. Ultimately, what we landed on is, well, what if we could have a, at least a second home somewhere, somewhere maybe possibly in Europe, where every time that we came over, we could also then go and explore Europe for a time, and let that be sort of our launch pad. And obviously, as Alicia said, Spanish speaking was very important, so of course, Spain was number one on the list. We did explore a bit of Central America, Latin America also, just because we thought, well, that could also be a hub to go and

First Visit to Mallorca: A Last-Minute Stop that Changed Everything

Explore and maybe more accessible in some way, you know, Mexico or whatever, sure, certainly, it would have like the flight time between our

Like home base and Central America is and the time zones, there’s a lot, there’s many options, and in some ways it’s more practical, but every time we came here, I mean, nothing beats this, you know, you can talk yourself, when you say came here, Spain or Mallorca in particular, so how did you manage to get to Mallorca for the first time? Like how did it come on your horizon? I feel like it was one of those just serendipitous circumstances, because neither of us had actually been to Spain since we were children, and we were looking for, at the, we had a trip planned to Italy, and we were looking for a sort of last stop on our way back to the US, and we’re just sort of looking at what flights were available. I don’t even think it was on our radar, I we hadn’t even really heard of it. I remember Googling, “Where is Palma?” Like, I had never heard of Palma, you know, as a city, certainly it’s not really on most Americans’ radars. And so we’d never really heard of it, but there was this really great cheap flight, and so we were like, “Oh, like it looked beautiful, okay, let’s let’s see what this look or what this actually is.” Yeah, and as we started researching what Mallorca has to offer, it was like, “Oh, yes, okay, fully, we need to come here for this last little leg of our trip.” And so we’d really just spent a week here, bopping around the island, and that was

2019, 2019, yeah. And it just is one of those places that

Sticks with you, at least it, I know, I had exactly the same experience, and we were talking, like, how long am I coming to Mayor, and it’s been like over 30 years. I think there’s something about this island that just connects with your heart. Yes, and if you have that experience, Mayor Yorkca plays an important part of your life, an important role. So obviously, you had this feeling, both of you, right? Yeah, well, we weren’t, yeah, when we came here, we that wasn’t the first time, that wasn’t with the intention necessarily to be buying anything, it was just on holiday, but then as we were considering other places that were perhaps easier to get to, logistically, would have made more sense, nowhere was pulling us back like Mayorca did. And we were even sort of resistant to Mayorca, that, like, yeah, because there’s no direct flights

The Island’s Emotional Pull: “It Just Felt Right”

From Denver, it’s, um, it’s all just a little more challenging to make work, but we couldn’t deny that feeling of just, this feels like where we want to be. So that was, you know, late summer 2019, and it wasn’t much longer before we started to get really serious about, well, you start playing around on the home listing websites, and you start dreaming, and then that’s just the first step. That’s when you started to focus on Mayor, and what was your criteria when you were looking for a home here? Well, I think honestly, um,

Alicia being this sort of water baby, we thought, okay, it has to be somewhere near the water. Fortunately, almost everywhere on the island is close enough to the water. And, you know, we have these sort of romantic ideas of, you know, being somewhere in an old town with a coffee shop or something like that, you know, yeah, these sort of cliched versions of European life in your head. Those were the two main things, but similar to what we said about Morca, I mean, we have in our life, you know, where you decide to settle in needs to be somewhere where that like draws in your heart. And so whatever we were really looking for, we weren’t going to see in a in a listing. We had to go and see and feel. So that’s why we made so many trips over here. And, you know, like Alicia said, our our first time in 2019, we we were really just sort of picking random places on the island. We didn’t understand the geography or the cultural differences between where we were staying. And then

Beginning the Home Search: Romance Meets Reality

We started being much more intentional and speaking with resources that we ended up finding, but we really, even on our first trip, we did stroll through Pollensa on our way to Formentor, but yeah, that was the calling, you know, and then once we started getting really serious, we started finding, you know, professionals that can help us in that search, and that’s how the connection came through ourselves. So

Working with a Buyer’s Agent – and Why It Changed Everything

We can talk maybe a little bit about that. So you used the services of a property buyer’s agency. It’s not so common in Mallorca, because northern Europeans, they don’t know so much about this service of a property buyer’s agency, but of course, in America, you’re very familiar with having a representative for the buyer and a different representative for the seller, yes, right. So was that a service that you were actively looking for when you thought about buying here? Yes, we, yeah,

Certainly we were accustomed to that, and we had also gone in search of, it was in a different type of capacity, but when we were working on our travels and our visas in New Zealand, we sought out a similar type of service, essentially, to someone who could really like hold our hand through the process since we were unfamiliar. And so we set about trying to find something similar here, here, and that’s how you got in connection with Lucy Adamson, yes, from the HC property buyers, and something that you need to know about us is that we do a lot of things, you know, diving in head first without knowing what we’re doing, and we always get it wrong, and so we sort of have started to learn that when you can find a resource that can be actually helpful to help sort of guide you and help you avoid the mistakes that are just littered along the way. And so when taking on something as big as buying a property abroad, and certainly in a country that doesn’t primarily speak English,

It was just so hard to find a resource, even online, that had the volume of information, knowledge, insights that you all had, and then of course, once we got to speak with Lucy, to be able to have her number to ask her any little question, I mean, she was just phenomenal, and I truly don’t think we could have done any of this without you, without your company, without Lucy, and all the people that she recommended. Yeah, thank you. It just makes it paves the way, doesn’t it too? And it takes a lot of the fear and the unknown away, absolutely. Well, and just because, and like, not all services are created equal, just because we’re accustomed to that in the US, we haven’t necessarily had fantastic experiences with being able to trust professionals there, and so

Learning essentially quite quickly how helpful and trustworthy and truly like on our side Lucy was immediately was just this like very like deep breath of like, “Oh, we could actually, we could do this, like, we could do this, could happen.” And did you view many properties along the way? Did you in person, or? Yeah, well, how did the process go? Because that was 2019, then we had the pandemic, right? And then so travel was more difficult, and then you, I think you initially met Lucy at the beginning of 2022, two, yeah, and then the process of actually finding a property, and you wanted a property with a rental license, right? That was ideal, ideal, yeah, which is like, it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack in Mallorca, because there’s no longer, there’s a moratorium on holiday rental licenses, so you have to find a property that has an existing license, and these are normally about 20% minimum higher because price because of.

Finding the Dream Home with a Holiday Rental License

The license, and also everybody, I mean, many, many people are looking for these, so it’s, there was a lot of factors, but you actually did find a home with a rental license, right? Yes, I think so. The process certainly started online with just getting a sense of

The different areas and what was available, and the types of homes that we might want to be considering, and then really narrowing in, so that when we were physically here, to really maximize our time with Lucy and be able to, she took us to several different properties, several different parts of the island that we had, like, once we had kind of narrowed in on where our top spots were, to, yeah, to really make the most of the limited time while we were here. But like, even in that process, we were sharing like our ideas with her, “Hey, what about Alaró? What about Artà? What about?” And she would sort of give us her honest opinion, and then we would start to look at properties, and then we would try to create like a travel itinerary for when we flew over, so that then we could see as many properties as we could in each town. And that was only, we were only, that time was what, maybe a week, maybe five, six days, something like that? And I mean, we were just, we were just so exhausted, and I’m sure we wore Lucy out during this time, but it really, I mean, well, it’s very

Intense, no, when you’re here on the island, you got these few days, and then you’re like, “Boom, boom, boom, let’s look at it.” And like you said, it’s so rare to find these, you know, that checks all of our boxes, so if you came across one, suddenly you’re thinking, “Oh my gosh, we have to make decisions today.” Probably that’s how it felt, because when is the next time we’re going to be over here? I don’t know, it was all like you said, very intense and stressful, but well, Lucy, I think, was really helpful in helping us understand the sort of ins and outs and logistics of the rental license, since we weren’t super familiar with it, and what was allowed, what wasn’t allowed, and

Once we sort of came to understand how valuable that element of a property is, then when we found our house that had one, it was like, “Oh, okay, like this is a quite a rare gem that we’ve been able to find here.” So you bought your dream house, and then the process started now of the

So tell me a little bit about that, because it was also quite, from when you initially found to completed, was actually quite a long spell. It’s not uncommon in the US from the day that you make your offer to the day that you close, that that time span is three weeks. Wow, so we were, and perhaps more average is four weeks. Okay. So this was all very new, that it was going to be quite a long process. And was there any particular reason for it? Was it, what was the issue? The casita that we bought, it had

The Long Road to Closing: Paperwork, Pace, and Patience

Been a family house that had been through many generations, and so not all of the paperwork was up to date in order to make the transfer sale. So our seller had to do, I’m not even sure, it sounded like a lot of stuff with the town council in order to get all the paperwork in order to give us the, so that took a while. We had to get the NIO number, you know, all of that. There was

Just a lot of technical stuff that we probably could have done sooner, maybe we could have started the process sooner, but all of that sort of started to drag it out. And then, of course, you know, things do just move more slowly, but it’s not always. Again, I have to say to you, we had a client from LA, he made an offer on a property on the 2nd of January this year, and they closed on the 21st. Oh, wow. Okay. And they did not have a knee number, they got the knee number, they it was a new property they bought here in Son Vida. So I just want to say that because it is possible. Sure. Where it’s a new property, of course, all the legalities, all of the paperwork, it’s all there, done and dusted. But where you buy an old property, and as you said, where maybe there’s been, you know, it hasn’t been kept up to date, all the legal papers, of course, if you start to then need the town hall and, you know, licenses and all of this, it can really draw the process out. But it is possible, actually, close, because I couldn’t believe that this happened, but it

That makes sense though, because, you know, as I think about the things that sort of slowed us down, you know, they were great, our sellers, but we moved

A Health Shock: Breast Cancer During the Purchase

At their pace, not at our pace, you know? So, mhm, and then actually you had a big shock during, yes, surprise, yeah, there was, during the whole process, while we were kind of, I think, under contract by that point, I came to find out that I had breast cancer. Oh my gosh. And I was 34 at the time, so certainly we weren’t expecting to have to deal with that, and just the stress and the time and energy that

Making sure that I was healthy required did certainly slow us down, and take, I mean, your focus was totally about your health and not, we wanted to, of course, keep things moving, but ultimately like my health had to be the main the main priority to make sure that I was okay. And so during our closing process was when I had the diagnosis, I had multiple surgeries to find out how serious everything was, and I started and completed chemo. Wow. Was there any moment when you thought, you know, maybe this isn’t a good idea and we should forget about this house in Mallorca? No.

What about, what about people around you? Were they saying to you, “Well, really, what are you doing?” Well, I, I mean, I

I felt so sure that we were doing the right thing, just because I, for me in particular, it was actually really wonderful that we were in this process of buying our dream home, because I really needed some notion of hope to be able to like grasp onto, of what I was going through all of this truly, truly terrible, terrible time for, of like what was going to be on the other side. And so

Being able to, just, yeah, like hold on to this dream that we were working toward was actually really helpful and pivotal in terms of I think my like mental health at the time. Although, sorry to throw my parents under the bus, but they absolutely thought that we were nuts for continuing since we had this massive life crisis, essentially, that we were also dealing with. But they just, they couldn’t quite understand how important really following through on, you know, making our dream come true was still quite essential. Maybe it became one of the main focal points, because I think when

Holding on to Hope Through Crisis – and the Power of Having a Trusted Team in Mallorca

We take, we take so much for granted, right? And I think when you’re 34 and you’re healthy, you have, you, you know, health is not the top of your list of things you think about every day because thankfully most of us don’t have to. And then you’re on the other hand trying to fulfill a life dream. Yeah, and maybe there was some connection between the two, the two things, absolutely. I lost my father to cancer when I was very young, and so I always have had a mentality of, we don’t, and he was quite young at the time also, and so of, we don’t know how long we’re on this earth for, we don’t actually know how long we have, and so like postponing our dreams, thinking, “Oh, we do that when we’re in our 50s,” or later than you think, right? But maybe this all made it more relevant to you to do it now. Yeah, that of course it was a little, I guess it was maybe a little crazy, I don’t know, but who cares? To be fair, I mean, like, it would have been crazy if we were trying to do it all on our own, because we were doing several doctor’s appointments every day and having to make these gigantic decisions like in real time for her health. On the property side, Lucy had it, she had it under control, and so I really to in defense of your parents and other people who thought we were crazy, I don’t think that they really understood the team that we had started to assemble that had our back. Yeah, no, that’s true. If we hadn’t been able to feel like we could fully trust Lucy and the team of other professionals that she was recommending to us along the way, then we, we probably couldn’t have kept going just because it was that would have been too many things. But during that time, there were so many moments that it was like, I don’t know, I don’t have the capacity to to to figure it out, like, Lucy, what do you think? And she was always, always there to help. I remember sending emails to our our lawyers here being like, “Uh, how’s everything going?” Because we hadn’t checked in in a while, and they would give us updates like, “Okay, and here’s our update. Alicia has breast cancer, so we might be harder to reach,” or, and they said, “No, it’s fine, we got it under control.” Yeah, yeah, that’s very true that we had to have like the right team here to be able to keep the process going. So how did it feel then at the end of this crisis, coming through, and then getting the keys of your new home?

Fulfilling this dream, how did you feel? For me, it was surreal. That was the. So we closed while I was in the middle of chemo, and I wasn’t able to travel for a few months prior, so we weren’t actually able to like get over here to see our new place until months afterward. And this was the first trip that we were able to take once I was through all of the treatment, and it was, I mean, I feel like we still walk around like this is wild, the art that we have a home here, but that was just, it felt like this unreal

First Visit After Treatment: A Dream Realized on Formentor Beach

Culmination of actually making this idea into a reality, yeah, which doesn’t always happen, you know, there’s plenty of ideas that don’t, and dreams that don’t actually come to fruition, so that was just, and I’d also, while I was going through my surgeries, which were painful, the anesthesiologist told me to go to my happy place, go to my happy place, and the first place that popped into my head was the beach at Formentor, and I didn’t know that that was my happy place until until that exact moment, and I just pictured myself being able to get back into that water on that beach in like

While we, you know, would have our new home, and so it was like such a dream come true, truly, like after, oh, that, um, that first trip, like being in the water at Fort Mentor, just like, oh my gosh, like, I, I survived all of this, I’m still here, like, I’m living, and we are living our dream. That’s beautiful, I’m so happy for you, really. Thank you so much for sharing that insight. It’s not easy, but I think it makes it all the more significant of the journey you’ve you’ve gone through to be here. So what about Pollensa? You chose this beautiful town, Pollensa, and it’s beautiful because it’s in the countryside, it’s tucked below the Tramuntana Mountains as your backdrop, and then you’re very close to the sea. You have Cala Sant Vicenç, you have the Port de Pollença, and it’s like, it’s all within your, um, a very short

Radius, so dream life, how has it been? I mean, just like you said, one of the great things about Mallorca generally is that there’s so much diversity here.

Life in Pollensa: Old Town Charm, a Slower Rhythm, Sea, and Mountains

Pollensa, Majorca, truly has it all. It boasts beautiful countryside that feels very European, is nestled at the base of mountains, and is a stone’s throw from some of the most beautiful coves and beaches we’ve ever seen. It offers everything you need for livability but is still quite small, which was perfect for us to build and curate a community. It’s that “Goldilocks” size—not too small, not too big or overwhelming. We constantly walk around, looking up, holding hands, and falling in love with Pollensa all over again.

How Much Time Do You Spend in Majorca?

Never enough! Every time we visit, we increase the length of our stay. In the two and a half years we’ve owned our home here, we’ve probably spent about two months of the year, spread across different seasons—two or three times a year, possibly up to a month each time. The goal, of course, is to fully transition to living here. We’re taking it step by step; this last trip was a little over a month, which felt very different from the three weeks we spent last time. We’re starting to learn the rhythms of daily life here, not just vacation life.

The Flexibility to Live in Majorca

Our careers do allow for this flexibility. I (CJ) went back to work at a marketing agency and was there for ten years, becoming the Vice President of Brand. I had ticked off all my career accomplishments, but I started to notice I was falling into a routine. I could visualize this being my life for the next several decades. Between that and the travel bug, and what we had going on here in Majorca, it felt like the only way to get true freedom was to build something myself. When I told my boss and mentor my plan, he was sad I was leaving, but he understood, as he started his company at my age. That was about a year ago, and it really opened up the idea that we could move here, as I’m no longer beholden to clients in the Mountain Time Zone, eight hours behind us. Alicia, as an entrepreneur and artist, also has this flexibility.

We are working through how to truly transition and maintain the same type of work here as we do back home. The time difference will always be an issue, and personally, I get so distracted by the beauty outside that I just want to explore! I have to work on my discipline; it’s so hard to have discipline in paradise. As entrepreneurs, we have to create our own structure, but it’s very possible. If you’re doing something you love, it becomes part of the joy. In the US, there’s a certain trajectory and momentum where it’s easy to work a 9-to-5 or 8-to-5 schedule. Here, especially in our new entrepreneurial lives, it’s so hard to be disciplined, and the beach is just down the road. We have to get better at setting those boundaries for ourselves. But in the meantime, we’re enjoying the best of it!

Surprises in Pollensa

One thing that surprised us was how much Catalan and Majorcan are spoken locally. This is part of what we wanted—local culture and a regional community. That’s part of what we love about life there. However, I wasn’t fully aware of how much of the local dialect would be spoken amongst the locals. It’s true in towns outside of Palma or the Southwest, where there’s more Castellano (Spanish) due to tourism. But in towns like Pollensa, Majorcan is still spoken in many homes and at the marketplace. It’s not to our exclusion as foreigners; I just need to learn more Catalan or Castellano, and even some of the local phrases. Friends we’ve made, who grew up in places like Manacor, even say that some phrasing in Pollensa is a little different from town to town. So, it’s about learning the hyper-local colloquialisms. I think you can live there without it; it’s a “nice-to-do.” It’s not a hindrance at all. I love going to the little market in the morning and hearing the town ladies saying hello to each other. Everyone is so friendly. It’s beautiful to move into a new town and feel that people are open to you.

Making Friends, Joining Community, and Building a New Life

Another surprise in Pollensa was discovering a lovely community. The more time we spend there, the more evident it becomes that alongside the tourists, there’s a rich local resident population. It’s lovely to be somewhere where you’re having a coffee, and you recognize everyone walking by, even if you don’t know their names. You exchange smiles, and slowly, little by little, we’re adding to our collection of friends. This started with Lucy introducing us to local people. CJ also joined some online Facebook groups, which seems to be more common here than in the States, where online communities often transition into real-life connections. We met some friends through yoga, and it’s amazing how meeting one person can lead to introductions to three more, and then those three introduce you to others. When we’re here for a month, it feels like we have a full social schedule. We’re always looking for new places to visit, and we keep track of local events.

Advice for Others Moving to Majorca

For anyone listening, I truly can’t recommend Lucy and her team enough. That would be the number one piece of advice. In the same vein, just go for it and start the process now. The island is so diverse, and for us, it was helpful to get the process going to truly understand where we wanted to be and what would make sense for a home. It’s fun to dream, plan, and look at listings online, but the hardest part is transitioning that dream into reality. Meeting Lucy was incredibly helpful in that regard, as was continuing to visit regularly and explore. Our friends and family in Colorado see Majorca on a map as a little dot, but they don’t realize it’s a larger island than many Americans think, and the towns are vast. The more we came, the more traction we gained. Meeting with Lucy, then bankers, then lawyers—it’s finally coming together. I don’t think we could have done it all online; we needed to be here for it to feel real.

There are other practical considerations. We were very lucky with the state of the world when we started moving money over; it was a great time to buy euros. In retrospect, we understand how lucky we were, and if we were to buy a second place, we’d watch the markets closely. For a big purchase, the transfer rate from US dollars to euros can be very significant. We just got lucky.

One small, perhaps US-specific, hiccup we encountered was needing a Spanish stamp in our passport when applying for residency. Since we always connect through Germany (there’s no direct flight from Denver to Palma), we didn’t have the right stamp. This required us to go to the Spanish consulate in Los Angeles, a two-and-a-half-hour flight. It was silly, just for a little stamp, but that would have been helpful to know in advance.

Managing a Holiday Rental Remotely

What’s been helpful for running our property remotely is hiring a local property management company. With the time difference and us being so far away, it’s too difficult to manage it ourselves. Having a local team is incredibly helpful for addressing any issues and managing the property to keep it rented when we’re not there. It’s worked out well.

Honestly, we didn’t realize how many companies offer these services. When we first closed on the property, we wondered who would help us manage it. We found places that would help with bookings but not on-site guest relations, or vice versa. It turns out there are many companies that do both, or even local individuals who can help. It takes some searching, but Facebook groups, Lucy, and our lawyer all had recommendations. It’s so helpful to have a team here taking care of it, especially with our daily stresses back in the US.

We also felt we understood what it meant to have a holiday license and were hopeful it would seamlessly allow us to rent the property when we weren’t there. We’ve been very happy with how valuable those licenses truly are and how much interest there is from tourists to stay here. The income you can generate can be significant. We were just crossing our fingers, but the reality has been quite good. It’s like we said earlier, we tend to cross our fingers and hope things work out, and so often in our lives, they haven’t, but here it has. It feels aligned with our life journey.

Quick Fire Questions

• Beach or mountain? Both! Why not both?
• Sunrise or sunset? I’m a sunset girl with a glass of wine.
• Summer heat or winter calm? Summer heat for me, absolutely. Growing up in the snow, it’s good to have that.
• Siesta or fiesta? Give me that fiesta!
• Pamboli or Ensaïmada? I actually really love Pamboli, so Pamboli.
• North Coast or South Coast? Of course, we’re North Coast people! That’s why we chose Pollensa.

Thank You and Final Thoughts

Thank you so much for sharing your story and insights. It was very nice to hear your personal journey; it made your move and transition here even more significant because of the element of hope that kept you in a good place during a crisis.

Thanks for letting us gush about our favorite place in the world. We do it all the time back home. If anyone has questions, find us—we’ll tell you all about it. We’re happy to help people, especially American people, who would love to know more about Majorca. We’re hearing more and more American accents every time we come over here, and we’re very happy to help our American friends settle into Majorca.

If you are planning to move to Majorca and would like some support and guidance on where to live on the island and buying a home here, we would love to help you make that transition. Contact us today to organize a time that suits you for an online consultation.