“We are renting out the house we bought to another couple from the TV show”
Father and daughter Uri and Shiann flew out to Cyprus in October 2021, looking for a three-bedroom home in the Paphos area. The plan is for Uri, a retired bus driver, to move with wife Hazel, to live in Cyprus and be much closer to their other daughter who lives in Israel.
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A year after their trip out to Cyprus with A Place in the Sun, last month [November] we caught up with Hazel and Uri in Aberdeen (no, they’ve not moved to Cyprus yet). “We’ve just signed the contract for the house last week!” says Helen, 65, who works in Boots and couldn’t take time off work for the filming. “It was the property that Uri and Shiann made an offer for on the TV programme – it seems a long time ago but it was the property five – in Pano Arodes.”
Pano Arodes is a village on the western tip of Cyprus, close to the British buyer hot spot of Peyia and 23km from Paphos. As you may have just seen on the TV programme, Hazel and Uri were looking for a location within a British community, near amenities like supermarkets, pharmacies and a hospital. Helen has still never been to Cyprus, yet after a very globe-trotting life with Uri, she had every confidence she will like it. “I lived in Israel for 20 years so am sure I will like it. Uri can be very impulsive but with Shiann on the filming trip, I felt relaxed about what they might choose,” she says.
Uri says they had a great time on the trip. “Shiann enjoyed it very much and we had a smashing TV crew. Shiann filmed very property and showed Hazel each night and we discussed them.”
Behind the delay in the purchase completion, says Hazel, were a number of things. “We had to sell our house in the UK, and Covid was still ongoing, and things move very slowly in Cyprus…” But she says they weren’t in a hurry and in fact they are not planning to move to their new three-bedroom house with a pool for a whole year.
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“We met two other property hunters who were also filming in Cyprus, Greg and Tina and whilst they didn’t find a property to buy, they are renting our house for a year whilst they are sorting out finances and looking around. It is ideal for us.”
Though it’s not that they’ve got a lot of packing to do or anything, she says. They are renting a place in Aberdeen until they go. “We don’t have much stuff, moving house is no big deal for us after so much travelling around. We’ll pack a suitcase and we’re away.” And there will be no visa headaches either when they go. “I’ve got a German passport so it should be easier,” says Uri.
But is Hazel not desperate to escape another Scottish winter now they have their ‘place in the sun’? “Oh no, I don’t really do heat,” she laughs, aware how odd it sounds. “I just can’t want to be close enough to my other daughter that we can just pop over and see her on an hour’s flight.”
