How long did we think this project was going to take? We had already read about the, shall we say, relaxed way or working and in fact had seem this in trying to arrange visits to the estate agents. We had also in our googling sessions come across a couple of really excellent websites, Gekkoportugal at www.gekkoportugal.com and The Overseas Guide Company – Portugal at www.portugalbuyingguide.com that gave us some wonderful information and set our expectations. We also would like to complete the project, if possible without having to borrow, so whilst we had some savings we would need some time to get the total amount together. Oh! That’s a point how much are we going to spend? We hadn’t thought too much about that.
So arbitrarily we said well let’s say 10 years, that gives us 3 years to hunt around, to find the best location, and maybe give us something to focus on when having a holiday rather than just seeing the sights. Then maybe another 4 years for the purchase and sorting out any permission we might need, then 3 more to get any building or fixing up done, and 10 is a nice round number and would give us some time.
The one thing we were not going to do was to rush into anything; we would take the Portuguese way and take our time. Whatever happened we were going to enjoy our first exploratory and not buy anything, it was just to see if this is something we could if we wanted to do.