Renovation Project - We´ve found a house
Well we are here on the silver Coast of Portugal and we are renting a fantastic apartment near to the beach. I had never lived near the beach before and it was not something that really appealed, but now we are here, I love it. I am taking strolls in the afternoon and life is pretty idyllic.
Should´nt we be a little stressed as we are trying to buy a new house, you would think so. But we had three in this area in our price range, the favourite was sold just before we arrived. So a bit gutted, but not to worry, it wasn´t meant to be.
The agent that we were in touch with had given us the address of the other 2 houses so we went to visit them and have a look at the area.
Our second favourite that had looked amazing on the photographs, looked quite different in real life. It was like a little house with a large pig shed. It also had a house just above that looked directly into it and a house attached that was derelict and belonged to somebody else! House number 2 ticked off the list.
If you are looking to buy abroad be very careful with the descriptions, at no point did the description say that any of the property belonged to anybody else and it would cost an extra 40,000 Euro to buy it. So in total over 100,000 Euro for something that looked like a pig shed, was on the main road and had a big hole in the roof (that was also not very clear on the photos)
But the the third favourite that was right at the top of our budget was perfect, so much so that we called at the agents office and asked if we could view it now. We did and it really was everything we dreamed of, in a very derelict, dirty, shoddy kinda way.
We put an offer on there and then, much lower but there is no harm in asking.
The evening is then spent backwards and forwards haggling until we reached a price we all agreed on. We are so lucky as it is a total of 4 houses and the 3 little houses have just had their habitation licenses agreed. The agent told us this information.
So we can now spend the rest of our 2 month let enjoying ourselves. The agent knows we have to be in within 2 months and recommends a lawyer (this woman turns out to be our saviour!)
Here are some of the photos of the area in Sao Martinho do Porto, so that you can understand why we are moving here
Top tips.
1. Ask a lot of questions when you contact the agent initially regarding a property. Mainly questions you wouldn´t think of, for example; does any body else own any part of the property, is it on a main road, does it have running water, does any body have right of way across your land. It really is a case of think of any random question and ask it.
2. If you are buying a beautiful house that is fully modernised you can probably ignore most of top tip one.
3. Actually even if you are buying a beautiful modernised house still ask all of top tip one just to be on the safe side.
4. If you find a house you like make an offer, what is the worst that can happen?
5. If you find your dream house be realistic about your offer price you don´t want to lose it
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