A new lease on life

We've bought houses and gotten quite a few leases for apartments in our decades on Earth, but getting a lease on a place in Lisbon was an entirely different level of effort. Much like with the bank setup, it took a lot longer than we'd thought.

We are learning to add a huge buffer of time from what we think to the reality. I think now it's just add 300% markup on time.

The leasing and housing market in Lisbon is really hopping right now. There are tons of people wanting to move there, and what seems like a lot of shifting in the market.

Ways that the U.S. is different from Portugal in leases.

Situation	Portugal	U.S.
Can cancel lease 1/3 of way into lease	Yes	No
Agent can work with you across the country, not just town to town	Yes	No
If you are married, you'll need to specify which type (have your marriage license ready to email)	Yes	No
Your passport and birth location will be on the lease (be ready to email a picture of it)	Yes	No
Your NIF (like SSN) will be on lease (be ready to email this)	Yes	No
You can get a lease in a few hours	No	Yes
MLS system available for all properties	No	Yes
Your rent has to be paid by wire transfer. Get a Wise or other account to move between U.S. and Portugal.	Yes	No

We figured out what we wanted/hoped for

• We sat down and made a write up of what we were looking for by priority, from absolute need to don't really care.

Some of the sites we used to do this research were

• Hoodpicker

• Idealista

• REMAX

• We started with a Mural/visual layout, because we are nerds and then made a Google Doc. No one but us really used it but it was helpful in getting us started. If it helps, here is the Mural, here is the doc.

Then reached out to an agent

I messaged a real estate agent based on others in the Facebook group that said they'd had success remotely working with him. Although we went to Lisbon to look at places, having someone that understood the process was great. He recommended a colleague of his in Lisbon to help. Even though agents can apparently work all over the country with you, I get the sense he was totally swamped. We were introduced to Filomena who took over our case.

I sent a few places over as example from Idealista and REMAX, and requested if she had any recommendations other than those properties to let us know. She mostly chased what I sent her. I sent the doc but they really just wanted links in an email.

I came to understand a few key things about Portugal's leasing situation pretty quickly

1. Flexibility is key. Some of the must not haves are things we had to settle for to get in the door. We had to really evaluate what our immediate vs end goals are. Our end goal is to move to Portugal, if we had to be next to a mall to get a lease, well then, we are still moving toward our end goal. The end goal is the key, flexibility with the in between is essential sometimes to get there. I'm not elated about our first apartment in Europe like I had in my mind, but that's not what we could pull off. We CAN pull of getting there.

2. Either you need a guarantor (financial backer or in the U.S. a co-signer) OR be prepared to negotiate forgoing that with MORE money/months of rent up front. This is very common, even if a guarantor is not listed in the information, they will still probably ask for one. Perhaps they'll ask when you look at the place, perhaps after you get back to your hotel and think 'oh, wow they don't need one'. Seems like 99% of the time, they will. So be prepared to either find someone in Portugal to be a secondary financial responsibility, or save up extra rent to put up front. Seems 6 (yes, six) months is the norm, we have a lease in process now with 4 months up front and 2 months of deposit (first/last).

3. The agent helping you (tenant agent, let's call them) AND the listing agent (the landlord's agent) both will be at a showing. So if you are wondering why it's difficult to get a time to look, that's why. The agents are working very hard to line up your time, theirs and get in the door with that agent before anyone else. So flexibility and patience is key here, like with anything in Portugal.

4. There is no MLS like in the States. There's no easy way for agents to look at the listing agent info, contact them, and get the lockbox codes and gain entry. They have to gain entry by the listing/landlord agent being there, too. So also too, there's no standard of info like checkboxes that denote 'needs guarantor', etc.

5. Be prepared for people to not understand why you need a lease 'so early'. If you are going for a D7 or other visa where you need a 12 month lease, be prepared to explain this a lot, to everyone from agents to banks. They have no idea, and are usually shocked, at the pre-prep, money, and faith one needs to be putting into this system to even submit the paperwork. I don't speak much Portuguese, but totally understood the look a landlord agent gave us when he learned we wanted the lease about four months before we'd actually be able to move in. Facial expressions will always be a way to communicate clearly, and it's clear he thought we were crazy until he understood why.

6. The lease will be bilingual, so you'll need to wait a while after your offer is approved. We waited almost two weeks from when we got a verbal agreement on the terms.

7. Get a WhatsApp account and be ready to use that. As soon as our agent got my WhatsApp the email chain became null. It was a little difficult to distill all the messages, being a database person it was a little hard to take but I know she was working her tail off as fast as she could to get us some showings. I still owe her a case of wine or something extra for her efforts.

8. There might be a broker or other colleague looking over the lease with your agent. Your agent might pull in another to help look over the lease and double check them at the end.

9. Get ready to wire transfer (not credit card, not ACH) money for the deposit and/or rent. We both setup Wise accounts which are great to transfer money from our U.S. Banks, convert to Euros, and move to our Portuguese bank account. If you use this url you also get up to a $600 USD transfer for free. You will see a green button saying Claim your fee-free transfer when you go on Wise after following that link.

10. Be proud of yourself for diving into something most people won't even bother trying. If I had a nickel for every time someone said they were inspired by what I was doing, I'd be already there on a Golden Visa.

Good luck in your efforts!