How we got our apartment/real estate in Portugal

12

Portugal, being a rational place, wants as part of the visa application process to make sure you aren’t going to be homeless and living on the streets when you arrive. Hence the need to prove you have a place to stay. Depending upon what embassy you apply to (nuts, huh?) either a six-month lease or a one-year lease will do. (Washington, D.C., our embassy, required six months.) But, given the torrent of applications coming in at the time we were applying, we opted to make our application as attractive as possible - we had heard that those with great applications were approved more easily and quickly.

So began The Great Apartment Hunt. As detailed elsewhere, we could not easily decide between Porto and Lisbon, and so let the apartment search dictate our first home city. Whichever found the apartment would be the winner.

You can either go the individual route or use a realtor. Sites like idealista, olx, facebook marketplace are where individuals list. Plus people who are leaving an apartment often try to find a leasee for their landlord.

Why on earth would you do that, you ask? Well, it turns out that if you have a lease for, say, a year, your lease is not really for a year. Hang with us. By law, at the 1/3 mark, you can give your landlord notice that you are moving out - the length of the notice depends on the length of the lease … two months for a year lease, three months for a two-year lease and so on. Time required to stay in an apartment on a one-year lease? Six months. Finding someone else to move in after you leave keeps your landlord happier, and more likely you’ll get your full deposit back.

We saw one of these recommendations on one of Facebook’s many “moving to Portugal” groups we were following, and sent a message. Honestly, we were sending dozens of messages at this point. And got a hit! And we loved the apartment! Great location! Great price! There was one weird thing: we couldn’t figure out where the front door to the unit was. Legit, we watched the walk-through video over and over and could not figure it out. It made us leery. We asked. We got back an answer that didn’t make sense. Oh well. Sent the contract along to Teresa Valenta de Almeida, the real estate attorney we had (if you are doing it yourself, you MUST have an attorney). She CALLED. FROM PORTUGAL. She said it was a scam. She had never seen one before, but she had heard about them.

Counting ourselves incredibly lucky, we swore to only use real estate agents from here out. We assumed we would have a real estate agent in each city. What they say about assuming proved true.

Real estate agents in Portugal work very differently than in the US. They only show properties associated with their firm - Coldwell Banker agents show Coldwell Banker listings, etc. That’s it. They may know of the perfect place, but it’s another firm, so they don’t pass it on. Apparently, commissions are not easily shared in Portugal. There are a few buyer’s agents. Some are quite good, some…. work on a different time table than we needed.

Teresa recommended the Amazing and Incredible Heather Youngman @ KW. She listened, and actually heard us. And she did more than just moan and groan about how expensive properties were! She showed us an apartment that was perfectly fine. We put in an offer.

Wait, what? An offer?

Yep. Here you see an apartment, you know that a gazillion other people are seeing the apartment, and offers will be opened at a certain time and date. Just like buying a house.

She showed us a second place. We liked that one a lot more. We placed a more aggressive offer, and included a “love letter”. They counter-offered. Yes. Counter-offered. Just like buying a house. We agreed to a two-year lease, and bam it was ours!