What did it? There are still flats for sale in the big block behind us, flats for sale all over town in fact that just aren’t moving. The ones across the canal are still a quarter empty and the development further along teh canal is almost half empty too, and just not budging.

The size might be a factor. Those other developments are huge, but the actual flats in them are tiny. I went looking at a couple a while back to see and they’re just pathetic, and badly finished as well. Rush jobs, cheap, shallow, no space… and no storage. Our flats come with a storage room underneath the building, which seems to be almost unique these days. Everyone see’s the storage and their eyes go like this: O.O

It’s a huge selling point. People want storage. They want somewhere to put their junk, because it’s obviously not going to fit inside the house.

Fingers crossed the two flats sell…

Click the pictures for more info.

The underpass to reach the car park was a necessity due to the tight space but it adds a rather nice character to the building as a whole and makes it look just that little bit different.

These flats are the first step on our family’s grand vision of cool visionnnessing…ary… whilst we’re in a recession it might seem odd to be building new properties, but house sales are still going on around this area and it’s still very desirable as a place to live. People are still buying, and that means we can still sell.

For now we’re going to sell two of the flats and probably hold onto the third. That one is a little smaller and a litle more qirky so it’ll be harder to sell in the current climate.

The longer term goal is, believe it or not, developing property in Paraguay. Raising sufficient capital here will allow us to begin developing there, where costs are much lower. Developing there serves two purposes – it provides much-needed rental accommodation in a country that is currently growing at a fairly rapid clip, and it gives us an “in”, getting us known in a country that’s practically made of silver. Almost literally made of silver, in fact.

Longer term still there are plans for a large chunk of the family to move out there permanently. it’s a nice country… but we’ll see, I suppose. I know Chris wouldn’t be too keen on the idea so perhaps we won’t be going – but, if things get really bad here, at least we’ll have somewhere to run to. But they won’t get bad. I think this is the year things will change.

But that’s another story.

And, soon perhaps, I should explain why I mention the family so much. But that’s another story too. Tomorrow I’m going to be playing with a little digger, digging up the road so we can lay an electrical cable to eventually provide power for this place. The gas guys are coming in as well to connect the gas main.