Posted: Fri Feb 5, 2021 10:00am
Hi Neil,
I have just been through the purchase process and like Tony, I ended up buying in Salir. This area of the Algarve seemed the best value for money, for what I was looking for. (20-40 minutes from Faro, 20-40 minutes from beach, close to healthcare - but not in a city, with land to grow some food for myself).
I have been visiting Portugal since my adventurous parents took me there at the age of 5 (I am now 62). I had many vacations around Quarteira area with my children.
Over the last 2 years I have been regularly short term renting in Olhao and Moncarapacho to practice living there and cooking for myself.
Each recent visit I have had a short list of properties to view and dedicated 1 full day to visit 5 or 6 properties of interest.
I searched a large area from Tavira - Almancil - Sao Bartolomeu de Messines - Odeleite before concentrating on the Salir-Alte area.
One thing I set up early in my time 'actually looking' for a property was a Solicitor (in my case Veronica Pisco, but there are many). She and her team did a lot of the harder work for me. Nuno (who works for Veronica) would organise the visits with the estate agents in a logical order and accompany me to all the properties, with advice on what can and can not be done to each property. The girls in the office would check out the documentation for the property to see all is build and registered legally. ( I found several properties with illegal roof extensions, which would become your problem if purchased).
Before you start seriously looking for a house to buy - you need to get a NIF (Portuguese tax number) and probably a bank account and registered as a non resident. All these I completed with the help of Veronica and her team.
There seems to be 4 basic property types to choose from :-
An apartment (could be inside a community with pools etc or a block in town)
A completed house (new build or refurbished by others)
A house to refurbish yourself (could be a ruin or just recently abandoned by family)
A plot of land where there has been a home, but it is just a pile of stones now.
!! There are lots of nice plots of 'agricultural' land for sale - you CAN NOT convert these to build a house !! Stay clear of these.
Having looked at all of the above, from 1 bed apartments to small farms with 20,000m2 land. I ended up with a 600m2 plot with a house that needs refurbishment and a set of outbuildings that can be converted to living space for visitors, at some point in the future.
There are several 'All Portugal' property sites, but you need to have some idea of where you want to live and how much you want to spend before you start looking.
A reasonable 1-2,000m2 plot of land with permission to build can be anything from ~50,000 Euro ( check for electricity, water and sewage ).
There are many rules on what you can and cannot build, many plots in the country you can expand by 300m2 - but many houses in a town/village you can not expand by even 1m2. The buildings and land are designated for what can be done to it (covered land can be used for housing, not covered land can be used for patio etc, the garden can also have different designations depending on size and location,
The house I have purchased (in December 2020), I am very limited on extending the house and I have to keep the front of the house 'as it is now'. I can paint it any colour I like, replace the windows - but I can not change the size or position of the windows nor add anything that changes the look of the front of the building.
I spent 2 weeks in January at the property, changing locks, setting up electricity and water contracts and connecting to tv and Internet. Unfortunately I had to get out quickly as the latest corona spike started shutting down my options to return to NL.
I will be back in Salir as soon as things open up again and start organising builders to work on the inside of my home.
My situation is a little more complicated as am a UK citizen, I have lived and worked in the Netherlands for over 20 years. So I will be retiring from the Netherlands to Portugal.
I hope these things help.
Good luck getting things started with your search.
Ian