Ideal Home!

Georgina Lawrence decided to leave England and retire to the lovely island of Grenada. Here she describes her experience.

Georgina Lawrence is  a nurse who retired from the NHS in England to move to Grenada, where she has been working part time at St George’s University Health Clinic. She lives in a residential area called L’Anse Aux Epines, which is a peninsula on the south-west of Grenada.
  Georgina decided to buy in the Caribbean after visiting Grenada several times over a period of ten years. ‘We were looking at the price of property in AAAltman Estate Agent
Office in 2002 and realised we could afford to buy a property when I retired from nursing in 2004!’ she recalls.  ‘We discussed the possibility with the manager who was most helpful in explaining the procedures and the time it would take to complete a sale.'
   Georgina and her partner were looking for a two bedroom property near the sea. Georgina explains: ‘We had spent a year looking at property on the web. We saw an ideal property in February 2004 and came to see it the following week but it had been sold. We saw three other properties and we liked the first one we saw and decided to put in an offer which was accepted.’
   The couple had sold two properties in the UK and this was to be their only home.
   The attractive location of the house and its unusual design features attracted them to the
property, plus the fact that it was ready to move into without any work.
   The buying process took six months, applying for an Alien’s Licence from the Government of Grenada. This required obtaining two character references, one bank reference and a police certificate. The application form and the final Sale Agreement had to be signed by a Notary Public in the UK.
  But then disaster hit! Georgina recalls: ‘When we were almost ready to move in the September, the island was hit by Hurricane Ivan. Fortunately, the house was not badly damaged and was repaired by the owners! We were eventually allowed to fly at the end of October, via Tobago as there were still no direct flights to Grenada.

  ‘Our container arrived in December. This was a fairly complicated procedure, requiring spending most of the day at the port with a customs officer checking everything and paying import duty on new goods.'