Big change of plans

We made a decision. We are going to sell our land & bits in Syria and develop the property in Crete instead. Fahed spoke to someone in Syria last night (at 3am Syrian time, what sort of hours do you have to work out there??) who said that property just isn't selling because of the civil unrest but also we don't know what will happen going forward. That means that values of obviously dropped. The drop seems to be something 75%. I think I was right to undervalue the property in my net worth calculations
over the years.

Our land has an old house on it. It already has drains and power so there is not quite as much ground work as the main house. We would need a large retaining wall at the front to ensure we dont slide off into the village. The new house would be in the same shape as the original building, built into the hillside. We will use concrete for the invisible bits and face the front in stone. Inside will be rendered walls but the arches, windows and doorways will be faced in stone.

My sister in law is happy to buy the land from in Syria, and so she should be at this price. She is visiting Syria herself in September so it should all start happening quite soon.

The money we receive should be enough to do the basic structure and ground works. The heavy saving we intended to do this year to develop the Syria land, with a view to selling, will now go to the next stage of the development of Villa Aziza.

I am sad to be bailing out on Syria but it is the obvious sensible move to make.

Some photos of the old house just to get in the mood.