Buying an apartment: our timeline

From "thinking about looking" to "we've got the keys" (79)

Not long ago, we did a similar post detailing our timeline from “wanting to emigrate” to “Portuguese residents.” People seemed to find it helpful so we used the same format here.

Clicking on a superscript number in the body of the post will take you to the corresponding footnote and hovering over the number will cause the text of the footnote to appear. Clicking on the number at the beginning of the footnote will return you to the body of the post. (Note: This works when using a web browser. There seems to be no way to easily move back and forth when reading as email or through Substack’s app. Sorry🙁. Feel free to ping Substack about this.)

Jan 16, 2023 (Mon) - Returned from a trip to Braga. We’d gone with the idea of trying to decide if Portugal in general, Braga in particular, might be a good fit for us.

Jan 25 (Wed) - Took a day trip to Oeiras to explore it as a possibility.

Feb 2 (Thurs) - Official decision day: we’re staying in Portugal.

Feb 24 (Fri) - Left on scouting trip to Coimbra and Braga.¹

Feb 27 (Mon) - Returned to Lisbon (a day earlier than originally planned).

Feb 28 (Tues) - Video call with our terrific real estate agent, Heather, who introduced us to her partner, Malika, and recommended we check out an apartment for sale near us. Malika arranged a viewing for March 2.

Mar 1 (Wed) - Organized into a spreadsheet about fifteen apartments in both Braga and Lisbon that Amy had found online. Shared document with Heather and Malika.

Mar 2 (Thurs) - Saw multiple apartments in the same building. Called our friends who had already bought an apartment in that building and asked to meet them for lunch.

Mar 3 (Fri) - After lunch with friends, made an offer on one of the apartments for under the asking price. Counter offer came back a few hours later with two options. Builder/owner wanted to move quickly and was willing to take less money in exchange for a faster timetable. We picked that option over the “more money, longer timeframe” choice and sent back our agreement.²

Also this day: liquidated mutual funds and directed Vanguard to send proceeds to our Capital One US checking account.³ Also began the process of linking our Capital One account to our Wise account.

Mar 4 (Sat) - Offer accepted! Verbal agreement reached.

Mar 6 (Mon) - Signed our first piece of paper: the reservation agreement.⁴ Next step: sign a Contrato de Promessa Compra e Venda (CPCV), which formalizes the terms of the deal by putting it in writing and adding the necessary fine print.

Also this day: Completed the process of linking Wise and Capital One accounts.

And: sent our required 90-day notice of lease termination to our landlord. Offered to help find new tenants if they’d like.

Mar 7 (Tues) - Funds from Vanguard arrived in Capital One account. Initiated transfer to Wise account.⁵

Also this day: Owner signed reservation agreement and we transferred 10.000€ from Millennium, our Portuguese bank, to owner via IBAN. (This money was refundable if things went off the rails.)⁶

And: landlord acknowledged receipt of lease termination notice. Last day paying rent on current apartment - June 5.

Mar 8 (Wed) - Malika says CPCV paperwork “is already in the hands of my lawyer for verification” and might be ready to sign by “end of week.”⁷

Mar 9 (Thurs) - Funds from Capital One arrived in Wise account. Initiated transfer to Millennium account at an exchange rate of 0.946800.⁸ Transfer completed within hours.⁹

Also this day: Malika says CPCV “will only be ready by Monday likely … we’re just checking with the builder for the docs needed.”

Mar 12 (Sun) - Scouting trip to IKEA to get a sense of furniture options.

Also this day: Accidental early release of blog post announcing our new apartment.¹⁰

Mar 13 (Mon) - Malika: “Everything is in good order [with the CPCV]. I am told we should be getting all the adjusted docs this afternoon.”

Mar 14 (Tues) -

(Sound Effect by Felix Quinol, courtesy of pixabay.com)

Mar 15 (Wed) - Malika calls late morning: we’ll be meeting “tomorrow or Friday” to sign the CPCV. Our calendars are free Thursday afternoon and all day Friday. She messages late afternoon: we can sign the CPCV on Friday or Monday. Our reservation agreement expires Monday; we opt for Friday.¹¹

Also this day: we emailed our Millennium bank rep to ask about arranging an in-branch visit for Friday to transfer the deposit via IBAN after we sign the CPCV.¹²

Mar 16 (Thurs) - Malika writes: we’ll need to bring passports and residency cards to tomorrow’s signing. Later, she writes again: the seller needs proof that we’re retired (“pension cheque or letter of some sort”), and proof of residency (utility bill or bank statement with our address). And for us to fill out a form designed to ensure we’re not laundering money.

Mar 17 (Fri) - Signed CPCV! Seller’s attorney, Maria de Lurdes Costa at TMA Legal, was surprised we had not yet seen the document and was quite patient with our many questions. We were there for well over an hour. Apparently, we can close pretty much any time after the required ten-day right of refusal span is over.¹³

Also this day: transferred deposit to seller.¹⁴

Mar 20 (Mon) - Went to the apartment with Malika and seller’s agent to take measurements and look for things like power outlet and light fixture locations.

Also this day: went back to attorney’s office to sign a copy of the CPCV that Scott had somehow failed to sign on Thursday, and which had somehow gone unnoticed by at least four people.

And: told everyone we wanted to close as soon as possible. Closing set for Wednesday, April 5!

Mar 21 (Tue) - Sellers' attorney writes: we’ll need a translator at the signing since the deed is written only in Portuguese.¹⁵ Malika writes: she needs "the documents for our NIF (the print out page from finanças)" and for Amy to write an explanation that she's retired and too young to take Social Security.¹⁶

Mar 26 (Sun) - Finding a translator has been a challenge.¹⁷ Malika writes to the attorney to clarify whether or not having one present is a requirement.¹⁸

Mar 27 (Mon) - Attorney responds: translator is mandatory. We reach out to eight different agencies and individuals to get quotes.¹⁹ Later that day, attorney writes unsolicited: we can use a "trainee lawyer" at her firm for no charge. We have a translator!

Also this day: we emailed our Millennium bank rep to ask about arranging an in-branch visit for next week to obtain a bank cheque to bring to the signing.²⁰

Mar 28 (Wed) - Attorney writes with information about condo fees.²¹

Apr 3 (Mon) - Obtained bank check for remainder of purchase price.²²

Also this day: Seller’s attorney writes: notary needs to know what state we were married in and whether we were “married under the north American marital property regime, equivalent to the Portuguese marital regime of jointly acquired property (meaning that the property each of you owned at the time of the marriage remain your own assets and the properties bought after the marriage belong to both of you).”²³

Apr 5 (Wed) - It’s done!²⁴

Apartment, building, and mailbox keys - all ours!

1. We wanted to go earlier but it was difficult to clear enough time on our calendars.

2. All of this was done verbally. Very different than what we’d gone through every time we’ve sold a house in the US.

3. In retrospect, we probably should have sent the money directly to our Wise account but we hadn’t connected the two directly.

4. This reserved the apartment for us. The owner (builder) agreed not to offer it to anyone else until March 20, 2023 - two weeks - and we agreed to work in good faith towards a deal. The outlines of the agreement had already been reached in principle; in this case it was just a matter of drafting the Contrato de Promessa Compra e Venda (CPCV).

5. Confirmation notification indicated this process typically take about three days.

6. This involved a 37-minute call to Millennium as neither the website nor the app allowed the transfer to go through. We were getting “maximum daily limit exceeded” messages. The customer service rep was stumped for a while - this transfer should not have triggered that message - but eventually worked things out. User error: Scott was scheduling the transfer for the next day rather than sending it through as instant. Millennium’s transfer limits are different for instant vs next-day transactions.

7. This document makes the deal binding. After we sign, we send over a non-refundable deposit. In our case, we offered a 20% deposit rather than the standard 10 since we wanted to encourage them to accept our below-asking-price offer.

8. For every $100 we converted, 94.68€ ended up in our Portuguese bank account. This includes the fee Wise charges for their service. Factor these losses into your equation to ensure you’re transferring enough.

9. It took us a total of six days to convert American dollars invested in mutual funds to euros in cash ready to spend on the apartment. It would have taken less time had we cut Capital One out of the loop. As it was, the money went through four different financial institutions.

10. Having just discovered how to add anchor links to the middle of Substack posts, Scott was editing some earlier blog entries and re-posting them. He also made some changes to the draft we’d been planning to send after signing the CPCV and rather than saving it as a draft, he sent it out by mistake. Oopsie.

11. Apparently, the vast majority of these signings are uneventful. Since we don’t know what’s actually in the document, though, we wanted to leave at least a little time for clarification and/or negotiation should either be necessary.

12. He never responded to this email. It’s (past) time to switch banks.

13. At least one entity - the Municipality of Lisbon - and possibly others, including the General Directorate of Heritage, has right of first refusal on any property for sale in Lisbon. This is primarily in case an unusually historic building or one with particular significance to the city’s plans comes on the market. It is rare for an entity to actually step in and purchase a building in this way.

14. This involved not one but two trips to the bank branch. The first time, we waited an hour before our number was called. (Pro tip: do not go to a bank branch at mid-day. You’ll watch tellers leave for lunch while customers who are on their lunch breaks arrive and queue.) Then, we spent 45 minutes with the teller who ended up calling our rep twice because there were issues with making the transfer. Apparently, Scott’s "US NIF” (took us a minute to realize he meant social security number) wasn’t attached to our account for some reason so Amy needed to sign the transfer paperwork. Amy had been nursing a badly injured dominant hand due to a fall a few days earlier. It’s inherently challenging to sign one’s name on a computer tablet under the best of circumstances. These not being the best of circumstances, Amy’s signature didn’t match the one the bank had on file. So our first transfer did not go through and Amy had to return to the branch to try again (she’d walked all the way home and changed clothes before they called her with the news). The second visit didn’t take as long but ended with Amy using the Livro de Reclamações after her polite request to speak to the manager was denied. It’s (past) time to switch banks.

15. The CPCV was in both Portuguese and English, like the lease to our current apartment.

16. More money laundering concerns. Since we have neither salaries nor government pensions, they are ensuring the money for this transaction is on the up and up. Apparently, the already-sent proof of the liquidation of mutual funds and the transaction receipts for each of the steps the money took en route to our Portuguese bank were not sufficient. Scott managed to get a letter from his previous employer stating that he retired last June. They wanted something similar from Amy.

17. It wasn’t necessary to hire a professional. Anyone with a reasonable degree of proficiency in Portuguese would do. We were uncomfortable asking a friend for a variety of reasons including the fact that virtually everyone we know who is capable of the task is likely to be at work on a Wednesday morning. Looking into professionals, translating generally refers to a document which is typically sent electronically or brought to the translator; the work is performed in the translator’s home or office. Interpreting is typically done on-site, which is what we need, and often involves relaying spoken words in real time. Things we did not expect to have to learn when buying an apartment.

18. The original email from the attorney stated: “The deed will be read and signed in Portuguese. So, you must bring along someone to the deed that may act as translator of the deed into English to yourselves.” We took that to mean the deal won’t happen unless you have a translator present. There was a chance it might instead mean if you want to fully understand the document before you sign it, you must bring a translator. Of course we want to understand what we are signing. The attorney was kind enough to send over a redacted copy of the deed from a different unit in the same building we’re moving to. We ran that through DeepL. We understand it. It’s not exactly what we’re used to from the US, but it’s not rocket science.

19. First response: agency saying they only provide translations in writing. Second response: agency with a quote of “€695 + VAT.” They wanted us to pay them tomorrow. Third response: a person Amy reached out to via Olx writing from Coimbra, where he went to accompany a client to a deed signing. His asking price was 70€. Fourth response: agency with a quote of “600€ + VAT = 738€.” Fifth response: a person Scott reached out to via interpreters.travel saying she doesn’t have enough experience to translate a deed. Sixth response: another interpreters.travel contact who said he couldn’t do it but we should expect to pay anywhere from 70-120€ for this service. Seventh response (the following day): another interpreters.travel contact who said he isn’t available at the time we need but would charge 75€/hr for this work. We never heard from the eighth person. Eight contacts yielded one viable option.

20. We also wanted to ensure there wouldn’t be a repeat of the fiasco from footnote 14. He never responded to this email. It’s (past) time to switch banks.

21. Yes, we keep calling the unit an apartment. Technically, it’s a condominium with a management company already in place to do … what, exactly, we’re not sure as the only common spaces in the building are the elevator and stairs. There are three separate types of fees: ordinary dues, a “contribution to the common reserve fund,” and “collective insurance.” Together, they total about 100€ per month.

22. This was easier than the last transfer of funds despite being roughly four times the amount of money. We were in and out in about an hour and had no issues with Scott being the only one signing documents. Amy didn’t even need to be present (though she was), which is a little scary come to think of it.

23. 🤷‍♀️Apparently this is basically so Scott can’t sell the unit without Amy’s permission. It likely has to do with cases of divorce, and maybe also death, although we’re fuzzier on that one.

24. Fascinating process. Very formal. Eight people in the conference room including the notary, who read mumbled (it was hard to hear him over the chest hair) the entire deed out loud in Portuguese, verifying identifications and numbers as he went, before our lovely translator (who was furiously checking her own numbers throughout) read it in English. It would have been considerably easier if we’d had a copy - in either Portuguese or English - to follow along with. As it was, it was a wash of words syllables both times through. Other than that, and a surprise 800€ notary fee to pay, it all went smoothly. We were in and out in less than an hour, including wait time before the process began. The hardest part was figuring out the keypad to get into the building.