My history with Portugal (Part 3/3)

January 27, 2017

This article is long overdue… To be honest with you, I’ve been very busy with our professional project in Portugal. This is the third and final part of a series of articles I’ve started about life in Portugal

As I said in my previous article, after several vacations spent in Portugal from 2011 to 2015, we had the crazy idea of building our house in Portugal. How did we come up with the idea?

Well, first of all, we’re no novices when it comes to buying real estate, since we’ve invested in around ten properties that we’ll be managing. As an aside, real estate has been part of my life for 10 years now: as a family social economy advisor, I worked for 7 years in housing-related support and then managed all our rentals. So at some point, Greg and I decided to find out more about the real estate market in Portugal, and more specifically in the south of Lisbon, our favorite region

It was April 2015, and just before our departure we were curious to find a real estate agency to find out about property market prices. To our great surprise, it was very difficult to find one in the area where we were, compared to England (where we lived for 3 years) and France, where there are estate agents on every street corner

After making the rounds of Costa da Caparica without success, we resigned ourselves to going to our favorite restaurant by the beach at Fonte da Tehla…and then, on the way, we came face to face with the Era estate agency. If that’s not a sign, I don’t know. We walk in, manage in English and Portuguese to explain to Anabela (our real estate agent, now a friend) our wish: to know the price of new houses in the Aroeira area (a region in full development according to the Portuguese we know and which Anabela has confirmed to us). And then she presented us with the ideal property that corresponded exactly to our desires: a spacious, bright, modern cube house with an infinity pool just 2km from the sea and close to shops. The exact location is called Aroeira, and you can visit the Aroeira page for more information

We still have time to visit a show home and discover the site of the future constructions. We didn’t give it much thought and decided to go ahead with the off-plan purchase. Greg was thrilled when he learned that it was possible to sign a loan agreement with a Portuguese bank!

Maison Villa Feria en cours de construction

We weren’t too worried, since the offer was for a “turnkey” house: the plans for the house were defined, all we had to do was get the builder to follow them, and we were in the clear… or so we thought… it turns out that things didn’t turn out quite as we’d imagined. And yes, buying a house off-plan, even if everything seems to be included as we were told, wasn’t really the case. Between unmentioned additional costs, changes to the plan without our agreement, unscheduled trips to Portugal to check on the progress of the work and so on, this purchase was a real “headache”!

If you’re interested, you’ll find some photos of our house on our rental page here.

That’s where we got the idea of setting up our own company, Villa Feria, to help people who want to invest in Portugal with their property search, administrative formalities and settling in. Our aim is to bring peace of mind, security and pleasure to your move to Portugal. This personal experience has really enabled us to understand the needs and fears of investors, to create trusting partnerships with real estate agencies/lawyers/bankers, and has given us the desire to help our compatriots, who like us, have fallen in love with this beautiful country. If I could have been better accompanied, advised and avoided all the inconveniences we encountered, I would have “signed up” straight away.

Virginie devant sa nouvelle maison au Portugal

I like the motto: “Everything happens for a reason”. Without the purchase of our house in Portugal, we would never have had the idea of creating a business and contributing to the dreams of other French people. So if you’ve read my article all the way to the end, you’re not here by chance either, so I invite you to leave me a comment, to share and to contact me…I assure you it’s free of charge 😉 and it’s above all with great pleasure that I’ll share my knowledge, my ideas, my good tips with you