Hi there,
After moving to Porto, we had gone through many different ideas.
We had thought about buying a loft for tourist rental after having our house. That idea was ruined when in Portugal they stopped issuing licenses for tourist accommodation due to the housing crisis.
Then we thought about buying a house in Turkey that would be our second home to spend the winter and rent it out in the summer. The situation in Turkey made us doubtful and it would imply higher expenses if we had to go to do procedures and arrangements, in addition to the fact that we did not know the language.
In one of our many peaks of stress and anxiety about the situation of the house, we thought about buying a piece of land to place a prefabricated house that was 100% to our liking.
Later, we would sell the house that was our current residence and that had given us so many headaches.
Thus, we began to see lands with Zome Matosinhos.
The budget for the land was 50,000 euros. Due to what we had investigated, between the house and the land, perhaps for less than 200,000 euros we could have the house of our dreams.
To buy a piece of land, you must go to the outskirts of Porto, so, depending on the location, it would be essential to buy a car, which would be an additional expense. In any case, the house would have to be accessible with public transport.
Having our house in a relatively privileged location, buying land would mean losing in that regard.
The land had to be urban or developable, have wide roads for trucks to enter, and not have an approved project so that the prefabricated house company could process the license.
According to what we had been informed, the time to obtain the construction license was 6/8 months and the time to build the house was 6/8 more months. The best option was the modular house which is mid-range.
Then we began to discover that most of the lots had approved townhome projects, making it impossible to put up a single-story manufactured home.
In addition, when we contacted the prefabricated house companies, we saw that in the end, they were not as cheap as we thought, because to the prices they place on the web pages, countless extras are added later.
Let’s also consider that having the prefabricated house ready to live in would surely cost us more than a year.
We visited a piece of land at 62,000 euros that we liked, but the SpotHome agent did not even show up for the visit and then they did not lower the price by a thousand euros. As things started badly, we decided to discard it.
So, we thought of also visiting houses that were already made in case there was something that was exactly what we were looking for.
So, we had both possibilities: the land with a prefabricated house and the house ready to move into.
After researching Idealista, we decided to visit these houses:
This house looked spectacular, and it was in Rio Tinto, which is an area that I love. The bad thing is that it was from Remax and from the ad, I got the impression that it was in an illegal situation. It was already sold when we contacted.
This house was gigantic and well-priced for the size and location. The only thing that I put in doubt were the qualities. It was already booked when I contacted them.
This house had been for sale for many months, and they did not want to know anything about real estate agencies, so we would have to visit it on our own. It didn’t appeal to me too much because it had windows in the ceiling and not on the walls. I left it as the last option to visit it on my own if we didn’t find anything better.
I discarded this house because it was “in the process of legalization”; that is to say, that it was in the same situation as mine.
This house was in Matosinhos. The house inside looked super cute, but I was not 100% convinced by the area.
When we visited, it was terrifying. They had half renovated some things and everything was horrible. There was nothing in the house that could be saved. It was ruled out because it was not ready to move in and because it needed a minimum of 100,000 euros for renovation works.
We visited on June 16. The area was fine, but the rooms and bathrooms were very small, smaller than our current house. In addition, they were doing the renovation without a license, so the house was in an irregular situation.
This house looked spectacular in the photos. We visited it on June 16 and the renovation and painting were very well done.
Although the outdoor area was wonderful, the house was in front of a road and the train tracks, so the noise was more than double compared to what we had in our house. Also, the bathrooms were extremely small and there was no space even to hang towels.
Also, there were some weird things. First, the renovation of the house had a one-year guarantee instead of having 5 years and they did not give us invoices because the owner had done it without declaring anything (illegally).
When we asked if the house had everything in order, he told us that the house was “before 1951 and that it did not need a license to use”. That the renovation had not modified the facade of the house, they had only made a basement but that all the houses in the area had basements. In other words, the house was illegal and was being sold in the same irregular conditions in which mine had been sold. In addition, the pool was also placed illegally because the pools also need a license from the Municipal Chamber.
So far, I had already visited 3 houses in which renovation works had been carried out illegally and which, of course, were in an irregular situation.
Here I understood that the vast majority of the houses in Porto are in the same situation as mine.
We visited it on June 17. When I saw the location on Google, I was left with doubt because it was right in front of a road.
First, the social bathroom was the only one with a bidet and the sink was microscopic, even smaller than the one in my bathroom at the beginning.
The rooms were very small, and the main room faced the street and was very noisy. The outdoor area was very good, and the finishes were of excellent quality, but since it only had a fence as a partition, everyone could see you, even from the street.
The location of this house was ideal. It was in Valbom a few minutes’ walk from our house.
In the photo you could see that the outdoor area was about to be fixed and I imagined that it would already be fixed.
The house had been halved because the owners were getting divorced.
The good thing is that the house had the possibility of building a one-bedroom house at the end of the lot.
The bad thing is that the social bathroom was extremely small and could not be modified to fit a shower. That bathroom and the house in general smelled bad.
The stairs that led to the rooms were impractical and almost vertical.
Upstairs there were two normal rooms and a room for the desk that was absurd for how extremely small it was.
In the outdoor area it was necessary to paint the gate, make the walls taller since everyone could see you from the street, finish fixing the garden and see what to do with the house that was at the end of the lot.
The house cost €295,000 and it probably needed at least another €200,000 to complete it.
Even so, Diego said that he wouldn’t buy that house if it was cheap.
Although it was a bit far from Porto, a 25-minute walk away, we had the metro station and Lidl; 25 minutes by bike we had the beach.
The area was beautiful and super quiet, although it was very loud when the planes passed.
We went with high expectations and illusions, but the house broke our hearts.
The first thing is that the house smelled horrible and as we went on it seems to have gotten worse and worse.
One of the bathrooms needed to be completely renovated and the other was so-so.
Two of the rooms had no windows, which was absurd for a house with 3 fronts.
There were many walls that were peeling of from the humidity and others that had cracks.
The kitchen was not what I expected.
Then there was a horrible bathroom with some kind of tool store behind it.
The terrace had a beautiful view, but it was very neglected, and all the floor tiles were peeling off.
Thus, after having seen dozens of houses in Idealista and having visited a few, we did not like any of them.
If I was going to spend 300,000 euros, it had to be a house that was perfect and adapted 100% to what I wanted.
We continued with both options in mind to continue looking for land and houses, but already considering that finding something better than the house we already had was not going to be so easy.
The good thing is that after being disappointed and disgusted with my house, after the visits, I began to appreciate it again. We realized that we had a very good house.
In addition, we realized that the illegal situation of our house was not an isolated or strange case, since all the houses that I had seen on Idealista were in the same situation.
In the future I will make you a part 2 so that you know how this story ends.