Casa Neroli

The first stage of the process is you have to complete a “Reserva” this document is signed by you and the estate agent and is your contract to buy. It will detail the details of the property, along with your name and address (in the UK) and the agreed price of the property. It will also state the deposit.

This is the first notable change in process to England, in Portugal the deposit is non-refundable, so from the point of signing you are legally obliged to pay the deposit amount, even if you pull out of the deal and even if you haven’t yet paid the deposit, you will have to once the document is signed. This all sounds very scary, but when you think about it makes perfect sense, if you are not serious about what you are doing, then don’t do it, if you are sure then this is not a problem.

How do you get an advogados / lawyer if you want one? Well I guess there are a number of ways, the Internet, recommendation or you can as we did take a recommendation from your estate agent. Um! A bit risky you may say, we did, but went ahead anyway, anyway it was fine as I said early a lot of business transactions like this are still very much based on trust in Portugal.

You can do all this via the Internet and email, as long as you have an Internet savvy agent and/or advogados / lawyer if you use one, we did and it worked well. We had lawyer check the details and signed the Reserva and send it back by the 11^th November. The next task of course is to pay the deposit; of course they want Euro’s. How do we do that?

The one thing we had learnt / read already was that the buying process was very different in Portugal to what it is in England. It seems that the estate agent can do everything for you, however being typically British and ever cautious we had read that we should have a lawyer.

You will read everywhere that you should do the same as you would if you where in England. We did get a Lawyer (advogados) and it worked well, I will explain what we did later. I think however this really is only needed if you don’t trust the people you are working with, or you are investing mega bucks.

If there is already a house on the plot you may want to consider a surveyor as well, I would expect if you are taking a mortgage this will be a necessity. We weren’t we were on the new build trek, so not relevant.  We did spend quite a bit of time and the sending of emails to both the agents and the lawyer, to make sure we could build a house. The agent made direct contact with the prevailing council and got further confirmation on what we would be allowed to do.

We later met up with another couple that brought a reasonably priced property and they didn’t use a lawyer and I have to say if I did it again, I wouldn’t bother. I only say that as we have come to trust Maria and Paulo implicitly and they always do their best for their clients.

Personally I would recommend you do whatever you feel comfortable with. It does feel alien to our British mentality, as mistrust is so bred into us these days. It’s a balance, can you afford the risk of losing your investment against the cost, our lawyer was very reasonably priced, again if you what to know how much please email me.

You also really need to do your homework and check the people you do work with are legitimate for example all estate agents have to be approved and registered, ask your agent for their registration details or AMI number. Please check it out, we heard stories of illegal agents quoting numbers to give the impression they are legitimate, when they are not, we didn’t have any of these problems, but then we did check, its easy to do, there is a central registration site where you can check their details you will find it at www.inci.pt/Portugues/Mediacao/Paginas/LicencaMediacao.aspx

You should do the same for any lawyer as well. If you decide to have one, check their details, again there is a central registration for all advogados, and you will find it at www.oa.pt. It doesn’t take long and worth doing, even if it just for peace of mind.

All these websites are in Portuguese, so you do have to work it out a bit, but if I can do it I am sure you can. I did it by working it out, but later I discover the wonderful world of Google translate, believe me this will make your life easier.

Today we sent the email and confirmed we wanted to purchase the plot. What now? What happens next? We know what to do in the UK, but in Portugal? Oh! Well I am sure we will work it out.

In total I think it was only about a week before we made the final decision, but once made, then there was no reason to hang about.

The next stage was to tell the agent and negotiate a final deal. One should always make an offer, but we knew the plot was already at a good price. We emailed Maria and Paulo and we did negotiate a small improvement.

The final deal we felt was fair and was what we were prepared to pay. Both Teresa and I are great believers in as long as both you and the seller are happy with what you paid then it’s a good deal.

The next few days were hard, every discussion was about what to do. Our hearts said go for it, but our brains said no hang on, there may be something better. It was certainly the right thing to do, come home and think more about, without the pressure of the agents and the plot keep drawing you towards it.

However it didn’t take too many days before our brains and hearts were in sync. We did all the things you should, drew up a list of all the pros and cons, and the only con we could come up with was that we said we wouldn’t do anything first time out. Well we soon disposed of that con, we hadn’t, we didn’t buy first time out! We came home and thought about!

I wont list all the pro’s as I am sure you would find it boring, but if you are thinking of doing anything like this, make sure you take the time to think it all through. I am not going to say how long that should be, you will know when and whether it’s right or not.

I think the final decision was when we just couldn’t think of anything we wanted that wasn’t on the plot, within our budget. We had by now come to the decision that we wanted a new build. It could be to our design and everyone wishes they can design their our house and we now have the opportunity to realise that dream. I haven’t on purpose mentioned anything about our age or our budget as they aren’t generally relevant, our story is relevant whatever your age or budget, but they did now have a bearing on the project.

I am not going to say exactly how old we are, that would be too much, but just to remind you that our children are grown up so we are not in our 20’s. This is relevant, as our design would bear in mind that we wanted something that would be easy to maintain and we weren’t looking to build a mansion, just something simple and on one level, it would easier to maintain.

On the price side, again its not really relevant, if you are really that interested please email and I would be happy to tell you, but it was when we realised that the price we were looking to pay was less than the price of the car we were driving and we didn’t blink at spending it on buying the car and we knew that we would loose up to 50% of the cars value as soon as we drove it of the forecourt. The final decision financially was when we answered the question, if it all went wrong and we lost the money would it bankrupt us. The answer was no, whilst no one likes to waste money, it wouldn’t kill us.

The next two days we drove back up through Portugal, Spain and France, staying overnight just outside Bordeaux in a Campanile, very similar to a Formula One, but it had a very small bathroom in the corner. We ate in the Buffalo Grill just a 5-minute walk away and were in bed by 8:00pm ready for an up and away at 4:00am. We arrived back in Dieppe around lunchtime on the Saturday in time to visit the local Hypermarket and do some serious damage to the credit card stocking up on wine and fresh croissants.

With the time difference we were back in Newhaven by 9:00pm and would have been home in less than 10 minutes, but decided to drop in on Teresa’s sisters and deliver croissants for the whole family before going home. That’s it first trip over, Wow! What a trip.

Well, we woke up early by the sun streaming in through our window, after all the horrible weather we had all week, it was such a lovely change to see the sun. We both looked at each other and said almost simultaneously, it would be really nice to be able to see that last property again in this sun. Teresa suggested phoning the agent and ask directions, but I thought despite everything I was fairly sure that I could find it again and if not then we would phone them. I would really like to revisit it without Remax and see what the views there were and how the constant downpour had affected the stream, would the stream be overflowing? What ever happened to our day of rest, peace and tranquility, oh well there’s always later today or even next holiday.

We agreed and by just after 8:30am we were breakfasted and had set off back up the A23. The conversation was as enthusiastic as the previous day, with an added slice of pessimism and apprehension. We managed without too much problem to find the road to the village and driving slowly through the village found the gap between the houses, folding in our door mirrors we squeezed through the gap. It seemed a bit further that we remembered, but we soon found the plot.

[Photos] The sun was beating down, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the views, well they were every bit what we would have wished for, to the North the views of the hills, to the East the plateaus, to the South clear views all the way to Castelo Branco and beyond and the West was protected by a raised bank, so no clear view but gave the property a feeling of privacy.

The stream was exactly as it had been the day before; the ground whilst soft was dry under foot. We spent about 2 hours just walking around admiring the plot and consuming the fruit. Yum…. Well one has to sample before buying eh!

As we got back into the car Teresa announced, “I want it, I want it, I want it,” I agreed. We drove down the lane trying to decide what to do next, do we show interest or do we wait? We need to time to think? This is only our first trip, but, but, but, it’s so right.

We drove out the village, through the next and by the time we reached the main road, about 10 minutes later, my mobile was ringing and it was Maria from Remax, “Just wondering after you comments yesterday, as it was such a lovely sunny day, today, would you like to go up to the last property we visited yesterday?” Do we say anything? Do we tell them we have already been back? Why not, we explained that we had already been back and spent a couple of hours.

Had we made it too obvious we were really interested? Well why not, we were and if we were why shouldn’t we find out more. So we arranged to meet them back in their office in Castelo Branco in the afternoon.

Around 2:30pm we met up with Maria and Paulo and explained we were really interested and asked a bunch more questions about what we could build, e.g. how big etc. I have to say we were really impressed with their knowledge, they knew the plot inside out, they knew all the information about what was allowed on the plot, plus what was or was not allowed on the adjacent plots as well. We were told that the plot next door was just agricultural and no building would be allowed. We thanked them again and explained that whilst right at this moment we felt this was right, we needed to go home to the UK and have a few days to think it over.

Could we really have found what we wanted on our first trip? No it doesn’t work that way, does it? We were so adamant we would not buy or even find anything on our first trip, remember in an earlier blog I had mentioned we had allowed 3 years to find what we wanted. We were so excited. I cant remember what we did the rest of the day, but I do know we did nothing else about from discuss this property, until we eventually fell asleep back in the hotel, so I guess one thing we did was drive back to the hotel.

Well I think by know you can imagine the conversation in our car as we followed the guys back to the motorway service station and onward back to the hotel. We were both so enthused about what we had just seen, but of course this is only the first visit and we are not buying and anyway we hadn’t seen what sort of views the property had.  Whilst it seemed idyllic in fruits trees, layout, electricity was to the edge of the plot, general overall size was perfect, just less than 2 acres and the land had some real character, there could have been a chemical factory or something equally horrible nearby we didn’t have a clue, as we couldn’t see beyond a few feet.

“I love it” Teresa declared “If we feel this way when the weather is so bad, imagine how we would feel if it was sunny”. I agreed, but we still needed to see more properties and see this one again on a better day. We knew we only had one day left this trip before setting off for the 2 day drive home and we had seen enough this trip, so tomorrow was outlined to be a day of rest and relaxation.(Yay)

Property 10 [Photos] – I don’t remember how long we drove; I don’t think it was long and I was desperately trying to keep track of where we were going. Over all of the three days I was shouting out place names as we went and Teresa was busily trying to note them down on scraps of paper, no mean feat I can tell you as we drove over all kinds of terrain and not really knowing how to pronounce or spell the places that I was shouting out, plus all the writing implements kept seeming running out of ink.

Eventually we drove though a small village and turned down a lane between two houses, I had to fold the door mirrors in at one point as it was particularly narrow. We were soon pulling up on the side of the track and Paulo guided us into a position we could park, as you can imagine it was quite tight, very muddy and there was a small river, well stream of water running down the side of the track. Paulo had got out, complete with umbrella as by now Maria was absolutely flatly refusing to get out the car.

It was extremely difficult to see the plot as now the fog had come down to such a point that you couldn’t see more than 20 feet (6.096Mtrs) in front of you, why would anyone want to live here! Well we walked down a short track and came upon a small hut with 2 doors, Paulo retrieved some keys that were hanging in a nearby tree and we inspected the inside of the building. It was extremely interesting. There were two rooms, one was purely being used for agricultural purposes and the other was reasonably clear, it had a bed, table and a few odd bits of furniture. No one actual lived here but it was obvious that the owner was not opposed to the occasional overnight stay. Interesting, as there was no water, electric, or ‘facilities’, you know what I mean.

Paulo escorted us around the two upper terraces, which were covered in grapevines; there were also about 3 Cherry trees, several fig trees, an Orange tree, an almond tree and several Olive trees. Well this was more like it, despite being soaked through to the skin, cold and being cuddled around the plot by Paulo, surprised it was me and not Teresa?

We then walked down a further small path, down a slope, passed another almond tree across a small stream (It was a real stream, not as result of the current weather) via a small bridge to an area which was covered with every sort of fruit tree you could want, Lemons, Oranges, Mandarins, Clementines, Pomegranates, Figs, Olives, Grapevines, Quince, Sharron Fruit, OMG (Oh My God) as they say these days this is so cool, so the sort of place we really wanted. Teresa and I just looked at each other and felt like a couple of teenagers, whilst trying to keep our composure in front of Paulo. We couldn’t talk but we were both thinking the same thing. Wow!

Paulo went on to explain that we would be able to get permission to build a house on the top terraces but not where all the fruit trees were as this area was designated agricultural land, but that seemed fine to us. We walked back to where we had parked and thanked Paulo and Maria for the day.

We followed them in the car back to the motorway (A23) and pulled over at the first service area, to say our goodbyes, we thanked them again and said we would be in contact soon and let them know what we wanted to do, but we did really like the last one, shame it was so foggy and wet.