Beautifully Restored 3 Bedroom Village House in Karya, Lefkada

Beautifully Restored 3 Bedroom Village House in Karya, Lefkada

This House is situated close to the centre of Karya. Karya is the prevous capital of Lefkada and is now the second largest town, although it is still a lovely authentic Greek village environment. The house itself is in a quiet position with mountain views. It has been beautifully restored to create an upto date house with character features. It benefits from easy road access and private parking.

This house would make an ideal home or holiday retreat on the island. The house is only 20 minutes drive from Lefkas Town or Nidri so would be ideal for someone who needs to travel regularly to either of these towns. Karya itself has plenty of shops and tavernas within a few minutes walk of the house.

Village/Town: Karya

Total Bedrooms: 3 Bedrooms

Total Bathrooms: 3 Bathrooms

Top Floor: The House has a spacious  open plan kitchen/lounge/dining area. The ceiling is vaulted giving it an great sense of space. The lounge area has an wood burner that keeps the whole floor warm in the winter. This floor also has  a cloakroom with WC. The room is dual aspect.

Lower Floor: There is a wooden staircase going down to the lower floor which contain 2 good size double bedrooms and a family bathroom. There is also a master bedroom with an ensuite bathroom and patio doors out onto a gated terrace.  There is a utility area beneath the stairs for a washing machine.  The rooms all have stone features and the whole floor is very cool in the summer and can be warmed in the winter with under floor heating.

Outside: The entrance to the house is from a paved private driveway with ample parking and up a set of feature stairs onto a large terrace for outside dining and relaxing, On the lower floor the master bedroom has it’s own small terrace which is gated to the front.

Road Access: The house is easily accessible from a public road

Hot Water: The hot water is supplied by solar panels and tank on the roof

ElectricityHeating/Air Conditioning: The house has electric under-floor heating on the lower floor and  a wood burning stove on the ground floor.

The Price is €159,999 including furniture

To arrange to view this Property please email experthelpuk@gmail.com

Building house in Lefkas,Greece - Part 3 - The Build

After buying a piece of land in November 2014 the next stage was to get our house built with a target of moving in by mid-November exactly a year after we bought the land. 

This was thought to be a challenge by all in the project team and would probably be some sort of Lefkada record if we achieved it.

The plot was outside the town planning boundaries so we had to get a certificate to confirm that this land was not a forest. This involved advertising in a local newspaper for a couple of months so anyone that believed it was, could object.

Although we have a few large pine trees and 28 olive trees it was confirmed, after much stamping of papers, that our land does not constitute a forest.

We also had an archaeological check on the land by digging a trench and inviting a nice lady from the council to look in our hole for anything representing relics (it was raining so she didn’t stay long).

The final stage of getting ready to build was obtaining the license which was a submission of our plans which went well with a couple of small hiccups.

This was all handled by our construction team and architect who for some days seemed to camp in the town hall until they got what they needed.

We were finally good to go in March when the rains had stopped and the weather forecast looked favourable. The diggers moved in and the foundation excavations took place

Lefkada is in an earthquake zone therefore all new buildings are built with very strong  foundations, even though we were building a one storey house the foundations and supports are built to a minimum specification of 3 storey equivalent. This is done to an exact method that allows the house to move with the earthquake in a ‘raft’ fashion to withstand very strong quakes.

The only time you see a building inspector in Greece is after the foundations are finished, when he signs off that you can go forward and complete the rest of the house, this inspection happened with no problems.

The house is a predominantly concrete construction with reinforced steel supports. The shell of the house was put up fairly quickly in the following few weeks and was left to ‘cure’ although we did have to water it like a plant to make sure the concrete didn’t crack in the spring sunshine.

The walls of the house were built with new technology,  honeycomb thermal bricks which are designed to keep in the warmth in the winter and keep out the heat in the summer.

The house was then plastered on the inside and rendered on the outside.

About this time in the mid-summer the latest ‘Greek Crisis’ hit which meant that getting our money from the UK became a challenge and our builders had problems paying for products from abroad.

This slowed some of the next parts of the project but we managed with creative thinking and money ‘smuggling’ to get what we needed.

We lived on site during the project in a caravan which meant we could give a daily inspection of the works which made a big difference to the speed and progress of the house.

The roof went on next, a standard timber, tile and insulation construction.

The house was now looking like a house, we were just missing the crucial windows and doors to make it watertight. These were coming from Germany so were some of the late arrivals due to the money constraints. As we have very little rain in Lefkada in the summer this didn’t really pose us any problems.

Our experience of Greek construction workers and tradesmen is they work extremely hard and fast when they are on site. It is getting them on site to start and finish a job that is the knack to getting a project finished.

The electrics, plumbing and interior walls and decorating all happened in varying sequences over the remainder of the summer depending on the availability of the workers.

We finally moved in early November two weeks before our target date of a year. We had a few finishing touches still to happen such as kitchen tiling and a shower screen which were still on order from abroad.

The whole project came in on budget with a little help from a positive exchange rate and we are now happily living in our new home which was cosy and warm through the winter.

Next stage is finishing the landscaping and building a swimming pool. So keep an eye out for your invite to the pool party!!

Building a house in Lefkas, Greece.- Part 2 - Buying the land.

Once we decided to investigate building our own house, we came up with a simple design of a villa, based on one we had rented the winter before. We talked to a couple of building firms and went to see some examples of their work on the island. We received a price for the villa finished to a standard ready to move in. The price looked acceptable and within the budget we had, including allowing for buying a plot of land.

The project was in motion, we set off on the mission to find a suitable plot of land.

  

We looked at around 8 plots of land. There are huge variations about what is the available on the island. The east coast ,sea front plots, are mostly taken up now or are being snapped up for excessive prices by rich foreign purchasers.  It is possible to get a reasonable size plot with a sea view but very high up into the hills, meaning a regular difficult drive to get the shops and amenities.

We concluded that we wanted to be on the flat and were happy to forgo the sea view for this benefit.

After seeing several plots that fitted our criteria we settled on a beautiful plot close to the Rachi waterfalls, at a price that fitted in with our plans.  The next step was to check the plot is registered on the newly formed Greek Land Register. This plot, it turned out, had been recorded incorrectly and belonged to four different people according to the land register. This meant we would need to go to court to have the documents changed and each of these four people would need to sign to say they agreed with the change. It was at this point that we decided to walk away from this piece of land. We promised ourselves, as we went through this process, that the minute something felt wrong, that we would not continue in that direction.

After a short search, we found a new and much better plot not far away from the one we had selected.  It has a lovely creek running alongside and it was actually much bigger. It sits in the olive groves and has 28 olive trees and a selection of lemon and other fruit trees already in place.

We loved it straight away with the only downside being a commercial property opposite. We agreed with the neighbour that we could either plant trees or put up a fence against his boundary to screen any part that we didn’t want to see.

Our Architect checked out the building regulations to ensure this land was approved for building with the local town hall and that all the land registry details were correct. This piece of land had not been registered yet so it was actually easier to ensure it was set up with the correct boundaries.

We then went ahead with the purchase of the land. In order to do this, we needed a Greek bank account and tax number. A notary then drew up a contract, which was also translated into English and both parties signed it and we handed over the money.

Mid-November 2014,we were the proud owners of a 2800 square metre plot of land on Lefkas, pictured above, with a promise from our building team that we would have a house by the following Autumn.   Time will tell…..

Building a House in Lefkas,Greece - Part 1 - Why we built a house?

In the summer of 2014 we sailed from our annual mooring in Lefkas Marina around the Adriatic Sea. After visiting Albania, Montenegro, Croatia and Italy, we made our way back to the Ionian. As we turned the corner around the southern tip of Lefkas, back into the Inland Sea and could set eyes on the islands of Kefalonia, Ithaca and Meganissi, it occurred to us we had not seen anywhere we thought to be more beautiful on our most recent travels. This moment clarified our recent thoughts about settling down on the island of Lefkas. 

Whilst we were sailing, we had seen a personal advert on a social media site, for a house for sale close to the island for what seemed to be a very reasonable price. We decided we should make an appointment to see it as soon as we were back on dry land.

Given the unstable nature of the Greek economy, we decided that we wanted to keep the budget very tight and only spend what effectively we could afford to lose, if a worst scenario happened.

The house we had seen advertised seem to fit all our requirements, a decent size piece of land, at least two bedrooms, room to build a pool, a short drive to amenities such as a supermarket and tavernas.

 

We arranged to see it, although in need of a little modernisation it seemed to be all it promised.  The man that owned the property showed us round in detail and was extremely friendly.  We are quite impulsive people that believe that things happen for a reason, so although this was the only property we had viewed we decided to go ahead with an offer.

The following day, we made the elderly Greek gentleman an offer of the asking price, at which point he informed us he had decided to double the price.  At this news, we walked away wondering what had prompted this reaction, we speculated that he had either changed his mind about selling at all, or just believed as we were ‘affluent foreigners’ we would pay more for his property. Unfortunately, the latter seemed to be more likely as we further investigated how the Greek property market worked.

We continued with our search and spoke to several estate agents. We viewed several properties in our price range and above and reached the following conclusions.

· Properties for sale in the estate agents are nearly all owned by expats and have been priced relatively to what they had been purchased for in better times or slightly reduced by the more realistic vendors.

· The market was very slow and nothing much was moving.

· To get a property in our price range we were going to have to live in a remote village in the mountains and make a number of compromises on our requirements.

A little disheartened we discussed it with a Greek friend of ours, who also happens to be an architect. He suggested that we look at buying a plot of land and building what we wanted. We imagined this would be both expensive and fraught with bureaucracy and unforeseen problems.  We agreed however we would look in to it.