Ian28 wrote on Fri Feb 5, 2021 12:13pm:
Hi Jazz,
There are many similarities to the UK and NL (where I live) purchase processes, so negotiation is mostly possible but not always successful.
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I found the majority of properties I was interested in were where a family were selling their parents old home. In these cases you needed the agreement of many people if you wanted to put in a lower offer. 7 siblings was the most I came across and could not get them all to agree on a lower price (which is offered via the broker not by you to each).
The house I eventually bought, was being sold by 2 brothers and I got a reduction of 6,000 on a property up for 170,000 before the survey, but no more reduction after some minor issues were found in the survey. I went ahead anyway knowing there were extra repairs needed.
The process:-
You put in an initial verbal offer and if accepted you organise a surveyor to check the building out, and get a lawyer's office to check out the paperwork at the town hall.
You can try to adjust your offer after a bad survey - but I found this was not accepted if the property has interest from other people.
Then you make a legally binding offer via your lawyer and detail the dates for purchase.
You are required to deposit 10% of the price, which you lose if you pull out.
You need to make the full funds available to the notary a few days before the purchase date.
I gave my lawyer Power of Attorney for the process as Covid travel restrictions were in place preventing me from easily going to the various document signings.
I hope this helps
Ian
Hi Jazz,
I would concur with Ian's comments. I bought a flat in Salir from a "developer", a small family owned building firm, and found they didn't want to negotiate much beyond a small reduction of a few thousand euros on a flat up for 125,000. People still remember the heady property prices of the pre 2008 bubble (when this flat was built/rebuilt) and dislike accepting those days are long gone, even when it had remained unsold for 10 years.
With regard to death taxes and estate law it is (or was pre-Brexit, not sure now) possible to draw up a will to have the UK's estate law's recognized and leave the property to a named person or people rather than the automatic requirement for a division between spouse and children. Any estate duty on death must be paid before inheritance can be actioned so if duties are likely to be substantial, or a problem for your heirs to raise quickly, it may be worth putting money aside, or taking out an insurance policy to cover this, as it gets messy if the duty is not paid pronto. Local advice from a Portuguese lawyer is definitely needed here.
I have visited Veronica Pesco to chat about taxes and she seemed very knowledgeable and professional. In the end I bit the bullet and got to grips with doing the taxation stuff myself including NHR tax status, through the internet portals, and only needed an hour's support from a small accountants' firm to successfully file my taxes. I also did my driving license application myself. Portugal is quite well set up for doing stuff electronically and Google translate works well where an English version is not available.
I use a solicitor in Sao Bras de Alportel, (Cristina Eusébio, Solicitadora C. P. 3052, Tel 917 855 377, Rua Gago Coutinho nº 71, 8150-151 São Brás de Alportel) for my property purchases, bank account set up etc. if you want to get a comparison quotation. I also used a power of attorney as this was all done before I moved to Portugal. Getting the power of attorney set up in the UK was non-trivial and needed visits to a Notary Public for an Apostille and translation for some UK documents.
Best regards,
Tony