Portugal: Choices and consequences

We went for another visit to each of the houses that we had chosen.  Even before we walked into the condo and were handed the condo rule book in Portuguese, we had decided to opt for autonomy over convenience.

So, almost exactly a year after we drove down our steep driveway in Essex for the last time, we decided to put an offer in on the Energy House.

I suppose two things really influenced our approach to the offer.  The first was remembering how painful some of the unforeseen complications in the previous house were and the second was that we had a backup plan to come back again next year to continue looking if necessary.  

We lived in our previous house (a duplex) without complication for more or less the first 6 years - and then for the next 11 years had to deal with condominium management issues (neighbors not paying) and a neighbor who bought land behind us and delighted in using his access to the right of way in front of our house to engage in a pissing contest with us every winter.

The bottom section of our driveway was shared with two neighbors, one really nice couple who really needed it to access a portion of their land (but never used it) and the other (behind us) who didn't need it (a driveway had been built directly to his property before he bought his land) but he insisted on exercising his right to use it because the right to use it existed.

The consequence was that every now and again in the summer he'd drive some farm equipment over it and in the winter when snow storms hit and we struggled for hours to clear the driveway and occasionally to help our neighbors who would get stuck, he would pull up and start complaining or yelling about his right of way being blocked.

At one point we had someone living next door with other tenants who was single,  in her late 50s and who worked as a carer for some elderly people in a nearby town.  She would come home after her shift and occasionally (say a couple of times each winter) get stuck somewhere on the driveway.

Of course it was annoying - she didn't have winter tires, didn't drive up the driveway boldly enough and didn't plan her comings and goings very well but I would go out and try to help if she got stuck.  

Our neighbor behind, in contrast, would come by at some point and start yelling about her blocking his right of way, completely ignoring the irony of being able to drive around to the front of the house from his house, without even using the right of way that she was blocking!

He made the outrageous suggestion that she should park at the city hall if it snowed enough to prevent her from getting up the driveway - a walk of a good 20 minutes, late at night, in sub-zero temperatures.

The people living in the 2nd unit of the condominium became increasingly difficult to deal with as well.   Over the 11 years it changed hands 4 times, each time getting worse.  Towards the end with the last two owners we had a boarding house operating from the unit with very little that we could remedy.  I described in an earlier entry what we discovered about the last sale of that second unit and how the previous owner had scammed them into thinking they were buying both our and their properties.

So our new house would not have a shared right of way, nor would it be in a condominium.

We'll set aside for the moment the possibility that we'll still have crappy neighbors.   At least they won't have leverage over parts of our property to make our lives miserable.

So, given that we felt this way, and, more importantly, that we were prepared to walk away from the house and come back in 3 months and begin the process all over again, we put in an offer that was considerably lower than the listed price.  We had heard that the house had been on the market for about 7 months before we looked at it and so our offer was accepted by the seller with a little bit of haggling.   There are plenty of houses on the market in southern Portugal that are changing hands rapidly for large amounts of money but they are mostly along the coast so a little inland gives you a chance of a better deal.

While we waited for the process following our accepted offer to unfold we had a house-sit near the town of Santarem - close to where a friend from Kimberley lives with her husband.  

Two heroes and a pigeon, Santarem - photo Anne

 

We stayed in a large house with beautiful tiled floors looking after two English Setters - the "gun dogs" used for hunting, except one of them was freaked out by the little insect zapper we occasionally used on the mosquitoes that managed to evade their mosquito screens and the other was freaked out by the sound of gunshots from hunting that happens in the area twice a week (hunters with dogs who walk the land looking for birds to flush out).

We underestimated their skittishness when we watched the quarter final between France and South Africa on the Sunday night where our clapping and shouting sent them both out into the yard.  

I found them much later in two separate corners wagging feebly, their eyes shining pitifully in the beam of my flashlight.  

Being outside was probably the best therapy for them because once we coaxed them to come back inside with us they were as happy as clams to sleep on their beds in our bedroom again.

During our trip to Santerem a survey of the Energy house was completed by an engineer who found a few minor things that we will need to correct if the sale goes through.  We are now in the process of legal diligence where a lawyer checks that the property does not have any debt associated with it and all the plans are in place to justify the structure.

There is a risk that things won't conclude but it is diminishing as we move through each phase of the process.  We have returned to Lagos and have signed papers to give our lawyer power of attorney to conclude the sale for us if things drag out beyond when we return to the USA in a few weeks.

In the meantime, we are finding other obstacles to do with getting residence permits.  It is inevitably more difficult than you imagine and there is a constant stream of conditions that we hadn't thought of but are gradually wading through.

For example, it appears that you might have to show proof of steady income in your retirement.  This is not difficult for people coming from a country or company where there are pensions that start paying out when you retire, but the USA reinvented all of that in 1978 when they introduced a law that allowed for 401k plans. Basically a 401k is an investment account into which the employer can put pretax retirement funds for the employee and the employee can decide how to invest these funds.  Often the money is deducted from the employee's salary pre-tax and occasionally the employer matches a small percentage as an incentive to contribute.

In addition to not having pensions, there is a very strong incentive to delay drawing Social Security, the government pension also funded from your monthly salary.  The biggest monthly payout comes when you are 70 (you can draw earlier but the monthly payments are almost double at 70 than they are if you start at say, 63).

So this presents a perfect storm if you have to show proof of regular income for a retiree.   There is a chance that the person reviewing your application will consider savings accounts and investment accounts as unreliable proof because "who knows, you could gamble it all away, or buy a boat!"  We are working to eliminate this risk in the process.

We have one more trip which will be up to Nazaré next week where at around this time of year they have freak 100ft waves that crazy people try to surf.

Wait, is this a metaphor for what we are doing?  

Maybe.