Once you become the owner of a property, there are still a few more things to take care of. You will need to have the electricity and water supply transferred to your name. In both cases, all you need to do is go to the relevant branch of the energy company or waterworks with the contract from the notary and present your ID. Somewhat surprisingly, we did not have to deal with municipal waste in the case of the house, as these fees were automatically added to the water bill. The previous owner offered to transfer the internet contract to us, but we did not take advantage of this. If you do not plan to spend most of the year in Portugal, it is better to purchase a separate data SIM card and a router in which to insert it.

The transfer of the property to your name in the land registry should be completed within approximately one month; in our case, it took 40 days. In Portugal, this procedure is carried out by the notary where you signed the final contract. We recommend checking this again at https://www.predialonline.mj.pt, where obtaining Informação Predial Simplificada (simplified property information) costs only €1.

A year on, we view the purchase of a house in Portugal positively. Don't be put off by a few complications – in our case, it was mainly the poor attitude of the real estate agent from Easygest. We definitely cannot recommend this real estate agency for mediating a purchase, but despite this, we managed to complete the whole process without any major difficulties.