To search for properties suitable for purchase in Portugal, the most useful website is https://www.idealista.pt, which brings together the largest number of offers from various real estate agencies across the country. It was from this website that we selected several properties that we might be interested in. We then tried to find all the properties on Google Street View. This proved to be a useful tool – some potential properties can be ruled out immediately, while others confirm your interest. A minor complication is that most real estate agencies do not list the exact location of the property, so it can sometimes be a bit of detective work. However, if you pay attention to various specific details in the photos, you can usually find the property after a while browsing Street View, even without the exact address. Of course, there is no point in doing this if the real estate agency only lists the district in a larger city.

Once you find your dream property on an advertising server, the more complicated phase begins—the first contact with the real estate agency. We usually wrote via WhatsApp. We didn't receive a response to some messages at all, but in the end, one real estate agency contacted us about the property we were interested in. For ads where no one responds, we recommend not wasting too much time – in Portugal, more often than elsewhere, if the other party is not interested, they simply do not respond.

Be sure to download a translator before viewing the property. We found DeepL to be a very good translator in this regard. Our real estate agent spoke a little English, but it's still definitely worth having a translator ready. Our first meeting went well—we liked the property, it was at a pretty good price, so we made a preliminary agreement with the owner to buy it. However, after the meeting, we went back home and as time passed, the real estate agent did not contact us, even though we tried to contact him repeatedly. In the end, we had to give up on the purchase, even though our first impression was positive.

So we continued our search for another suitable property and found a house we liked that was being offered by the same real estate agent. Quite a funny coincidence, right? Since this offer seemed to be the most suitable on the local market, we decided to contact him again—and to our surprise, this time he replied immediately. He claimed that the owner of the previous house had not provided the necessary documents, but that this house would be available immediately if we were interested. We really liked the house, and since there were no better properties on offer, we decided to go ahead with another viewing despite our initial bad experience. The property looked good in person, but the house had an old roof, which made it seem more expensive than it should have been for the price. So we tried to ask the owner for a discount, but he refused. It is common practice to ask for a 5-10% discount when buying property in Portugal. However, in addition to the house itself, we also liked the location, so we finally decided to accept the original price—we were buying it primarily as a cottage for ourselves. As a minimum concession, the real estate agent promised us that the owner would repair two doors in the house that needed it.