TD
I agree. What is the point? Ultimately that apartment is a goner. I would sooner the money went into the cofferes on this side of the ocean. Visiting can easily be done with renting an apartment.
I am looking to eventually retire abroad but it won't be Ekaterinburg. God forbid.
I would consider Sochi on the Black Sea. I am thinking that whatever their real estate market does over the forthcoming years it will never catch up with the American market.
Therefore I also cannot see any point in trying to rent out that place. Frankly it is a problem that I just don't want to think about right now. I have too many other things going on. One step at a time as they say.
Fortuntely it would not be expensive to keep it ticking so I guess that is the plan.
First there are trips over there, immigration, problems this side and god knows what else. So I will just wait.
Oh dear, you're a bit too eager to go back to school!
Now, we're all mates here, so you can be honest with us - tell us ALL about that fave schoolteacher you apparently still have a crash on ;-)
Not so fast Izi, hold on to yer horses, get out the oats & comb even. A given horse... no wait, from the horses mouth... oh well, don't make mincemeat out of a horses ass - or something like it :)
She's got the flat right, and she will be coming here (ok, there:)? I'll give you a bit of a curved ball now.
First of all, all those who have a woman coming within soon (Jet, listen...) will no doubt pay for her ticket. That's single trip tickets right, i.e. not a round trip return? Quite expensive in relation, but wait, there's more.
I (like in moi, can't use bold text here) would not, I'd buy her a return ticket. Valid for 6 months, an open return, which tends to be cheaper than a fixed short-period return even. Probably a bit more than a single but just think a bit:
Optimists: send the dam woman back after a short while! No, nonono, for a short holiday of course, to see her family, friends, and to ease her pining for the Alps or something alike ;-) Oh yes, she will have to get a ticket for her return to you again, but also open return's valid for a year exist, and again may even be cheaper than a normal return ticket - and again, will be just a bit more than a plain single. Get it? You also would like to see 'home' sometime, and a pending trip there would make life at least more bearable.
Pessimists: send the dam woman back after a short while!
In either case that flat/house/mansion (tick appropriate) would come in handy I'd say, and selling/flogging/borrowing one can always do.
Food for thought for some I think. The keyword here is 'saving', a word which also has 'safe' embedded in it.
TD
You can't leave the country during the K1 90 day period. Also it is frowned on leaving in the 2 year window for the 1st green card. Although I did do it. I was told not to but I did anyway. Nothing happened to me.
I don't see a return trip for at least 2 years. Maybe we will keep it I don't know. It is down on the list of prorities right now.
Good Ol' USA giving up it freedoms for security everyday. Soon you will have to have papers to travel from state to state. Too many privacy invasions going on now for the sake of security. The bigger the lie the more the bobbling heads believe it. You may think there is sarcasm in my tone, but the preverbial sh*t has yet to hit the fan.
TD - Ahh the schoolteacher I had a crush on, you know I still remember her well. Dam she was hot, lol
Unfortunatly I'm not one to give away too many details =P
I just appled for Nat's temp travel permission. She can travel out 3 times in 1 year. Only problem is that I heard that a woman was denied entry back into the us doing this. This thought scares the hell outta me. I can just imagine if they didn't let her back in... Someone will die and I will spend the rest of my life in prison... No I better nix that thought, but this does concern me quite a bit.
We plan yearly visits to Russia's various places of interest, specially those where Lena's relatives live.
Traveling outside the US is forbidden after the initial K1 fiance visa period.
You just have to make sure you follow the proper steps to ensure her conditional permanent residence status and file the right paperwork for travel permits, etc.
Izi has a built-in and well justified personal aversion to 'migra' dealings, but I know of many FSU women who tavel back alone or with their hubbies to visit family.
Things get more complicated once kids, though...
Information.
FSU use to have only apartment buildings after the WW II. The idea was to build fast a lots of small appartments for everyone, and after build bigger and nice places. The second part never came true.
As someone said before 1992-94 (not sure) most of the apartments were given to people for working for some organization. They were suppose to take care of people working for them. After 199something people which already had apartments were given legal rights (ownership)for this apartments. And now you cant get anything free, you have to buy or rent an apartment (or you family could give it to you or you can inherit it and so on). People which legally have their apartments can sell them or do what ever they want. Some people sill didn’t use this right (difficult to explain) mainly because you have to go through unpleasant process. Collect all sorts of documents (legal procedure) and you would have to pay more tax. But even with out process I described it is still yours.
Now it becomes more and popular to take a credit and buy apartment. Before people simply didn’t trust to a banking system. And if you buying some thing you would have to pay full price right there in cash! You can save money all your life or borrow or with family’s help.
Prices are different (as in America location location location!) Moscow, Saint Petersburg are costly from 15K (some where very far away from center of the city) to no limit.
As for smaller towns from 7K to 100K, some places more.
As for hot water. 99% of apartments have public hot water provider. That means if they provide you get it...if they didn’t you can only hope they’ll start doing it soon. Some times they work very bad. It is government organization. Some new apartments have own water heating systems.
As for living in apartments as I said before 1990th it wasn’t common to live in a house (I am talking in a city or town) place you could get house was a village. Small farming type of place in as you can say in a middle of nowhere! And it wasn’t cool to live like that.
As for now, it is hard to find land in a city to build a house, and it would be expensive, or far away from your work. And still it isn`t very common. So still there are many people living in apartments.
And for property in Ukraine, I would not advice you to buy it. It isn’t very stable country or safe country now. If you want something close to Black Sea, go to Sochi.
Any way as an investment it is a bad idea, you wouldn’t be able to rent it more that 200 –300 dollars a month. So do the math when it would really be brining money to you.
“You can't leave the country during the K1 90 day period. Also it is frowned on leaving in the 2 year window for the 1st green card”
Incorrect.
K1 allows your fiancée to enter US and stay there for 90 days. Purpose of K1 Visa is marriage if it wouldn’t take place in 90 days lady have to leave country. She couldn’t come to US go travel and come back using the same K1 visa. Even if you got married second day she crossed US border, it is fulfilled and you have to apply for change of her status (more doc’s more problems) and soon as she’ll get her firs green card she’ll be able to go any where she wants. And for period of time she’s waiting for first green card she can apply for travel doc’s which will allow her to re enter the country. It takes some time to get traveling doc’s but in case of emergency they should be issued fast. If she goes somewhere using traveling docs, she’s not permitted to stay longer then 6 months. So if she wouldn’t re enter US with in 6 month your application for change of status would be denied, she wouldn`t be able to come back to US and in order to get her back in to US you would have to apply for K3 visa (and there could be problems with getting it)