Well, We're Movin' On Up!

We Have an Apartment!

OMG! WOW!...

Well, We're movin' on up,

To the east side (no less).

To a deluxe apartment in the sky!

Our new future home in Bonfim as rendered in digital watercolor.

[Yes, I know this is a really long post, but please give it a read]

Well, this is an unexpected topic to post about at the end of February. I had planned and written an entire post about what type of visa we are going with, where we are in the process, how we got here, and what's next. But that will just have to wait until next time.

Allow me to explain... (Spoiler Alert!) We are planning to apply for the D7 Passive Income Visa to gain residency in Portugal (you probably already guessed that, so not really a spoiler alert). One of the requirements at the time of applying for the visa is providing proof that you have a place to live. You must either have purchased a property, or have in place, a 12 month rental agreement.

We are currently planning to apply for our visa in May (fingers crossed) with the goal of being approved and moving to Porto in July. In order to meet the requirement for housing, we plan to rent, and we were hoping to have the lease start on May 1st (it is considered a sunk cost of moving to Portugal on a D7 visa to rent an apartment and have it sit vacant for a few months).

With that in mind, I reached out to a realtor a few weeks back and we did a Zoom call going over his services work and what to expect. As we wrapped up the Zoom call, he said to reach out to him about six weeks before we want to start our lease. That would put us in mid-March.

Then one week later on a Friday night, I opened up my browser to Idealista (the Portuguese version of realtor.com) and...

Wait! What? OMG!!! There was an apartment for rent in a building I had first learned and gotten excited about back in fall of 2022. I was so drawn to the apartment back then because it had an amazing layout and pretty much ticked every box on our list of must haves. The apartment was rented by the time we made our third trip to Porto in December, but the building impacted me enough that I made Yoav walk with me to go and see it. Well, see the outside that is.

The view across the rooftops is stunning. We cannot wait for the future sunsets.

So, there I sat... Right before my very eyes, this listing for a unit near the very top of the building with views to die for. Including a sliver of a view of the Atlantic Ocean about 7 kilometers (4.5 miles) away. But wait, we were not ready to rent... Crap! What could we do?

My immediate gut feeling was that there was no way this would be available to us. We didn't even have our Portuguese bank account completely set up yet. Besides, somebody would swoop in and snatch it away... The rent was too reasonable for it to not be rented quickly. This just isn’t possible.

Also, I wasn't sure about the realtor I had reached out to¹. He is very nice, but although he is Portuguese, he has only been in Portugal for a couple of years. Before that, he was installing fire sprinklers in New Jersey.

Then Yoav reminded me of one of our FaceBook friends who gushed about her realtor. She, along with her husband moved to Porto from Atlanta last year. So we messaged her, and she quickly responded with her realtors info.

So, on Sunday night, I sent a message blindly to this realtor asking to work with her and also have her look into this apartment. The very next morning, we had a message from her that she had booked a video walk through for Tuesday afternoon. WOW! We hadn't even done a video call to meet each other and she had set up this walkthrough.

Well, as you can imagine, the video walkthrough went well. Our realtor is a gem and worked her butt off to make everything fall into place. Without going to go into the details, I will say that as a foreigner who at the moment has no stake in the country and is not even legally allowed to live there, there are many hoops to jump through and even more 't's to cross 'i's to dot. Because we do not currently have any 'skin in the game', we had to put up several additional months of security to ensure that we would not just walk away and leave them hanging. Fair enough, and we are fortunate enough to be able to come up with the extra ducats needed.

Back to our realtor, She truly is amazing. Her many years in the business really paid off. She worked with the management company and somehow we pulled it off via WhatsApp and secure emails. We signed the lease on Tuesday, and wired a shit-ton of money to the management company yesterday.

Brutalism, not the best example, but definitely a building of its time.

Now, I will be the first to admit, the building is not exactly a beauty. It is a high-rise building built in 1971, allegedly for government workers (or so I was told). It was built in the latter years of the Brutalist era² so very popular back then. However, not the good Brutalism of the era, more the monolithic concrete block of a tower type. Fortunately, we live on the inside of the building and not the outside. And that's what really matters. The upper floor units have sweeping views across the rooftops of the city.

So before I share what we ended up with, I want to share the list of our must-haves and preferred features.

The absolute must-haves were as follows:

• A T4 (four bedroom) unit, however a T3+1 (three bedroom with separate office) may work.

• Two bathrooms.

• Must have outdoor space (either a terrace or balcony) big enough to actually use.

• Must be within 2.5km (about 1.5 miles) of City Hall (we prefer to walk everywhere that we can). Our target neighborhood is Bonfim, located east of the central part of the city. But there are other neighborhoods nearby that are okay too.

• Easy access to the Metro, or major bus routes is very important

• Easy access to supermarket and restaurants is also very important

• Must be under €2,000 per month

Then there are the things we hoped for, but were open to compromise:

• A fully equipped kitchen and laundry (all appliances)

• Heat and maybe air conditioning

• We prefer older buildings because they tend to have higher ceilings, larger rooms, and more interesting features and layouts.

Now, allow me to expand on some of this criteria. We really do need four bedrooms. It feels a bit bougie, but we need our primary bedroom, a dedicated guest room, a studio for me, and an office for Yoav. As for bathrooms, having lived for the past six years with two toilets in our home, we are not willing to compromise on less than that.

Outdoor space is also something we will not compromise on. Our house in Philly is the first time we both have had outdoor space in our adult lives. I hope to never go back to not having a place to step outside for some fresh air. And we love sitting outside on summer evenings having dinner, hanging out, and enjoying cocktails. Although I am guessing we will not be barbecuing on the balcony in the new place.

A few of the listing photos. They weren't the best, but these should give an idea of the apartment.

So, what did this apartment in this building get us? Everything above, including location, with a few exceptions that we can live with. We will have to purchase a washing machine and microwave oven when we get there. There is no heating in the apartment, so we will need to use space heaters³. We will probably buy a portable ac for the primary bedroom so we can sleep in the summer on the few nights that aren’t comfortable. And while the ceilings are not super high, I suspect they are at least 2.5m (above 8ft), probably closer to 2.75m (9ft) based on the interior photos.

The apartment truly is ‘a deluxe apartment in the sky’. It is spacious at 170sm (about 1,800 sq ft) and has graciousness about it. It was clearly built for a comfortable yet moderately well-off family. Being built in 1971, it would have been constructed during the period of dictatorship⁴. And as previously noted, it was allegedly built for government workers, and I am guessing for higher ups in the government. It is now a condominium.

The apartment's location is right in our target neighborhood of Bonfim (on the east side of the center of the city), albeit a few blocks away from the prettiest parts of Bonfim, but still damned close enough. It is about an eight minute walk to the 24 de Agosto Metro Station, and about the same to two large supermarkets (Continente and Lidl). It's only about 1km (about 0.6 miles) from the main shopping strip along Santa Catarina. And it's only a 1.5km (just under one mile) or 20 min walk to City Hall, a good amount closer than we are here in Philly⁵.

Another angle of our view from the apartment.

Then there are the things the apartment has that we didn't ask for, but are absolutely thrilled to have. As previously mentioned, It is near the top floor and has sweeping views of the city, It has three exposures, mainly facing south, but also east and west. It has not one, not two, but three balconies! One off of the living room, and in two of the bedrooms.

And... Speaking of bedrooms... It has not four, but five bedrooms! And three baths!... Okay, technically it is a four bedroom apartment, but off the kitchen is a small former maid's quarters with 3/4 bath⁶. It has a dedicated laundry space off of the kitchen (this is pretty common in Portugal apartments). It also has a security person in the lobby, and an underground parking space. We don't plan to get a car anytime soon, but if we do, it will be nice to have a place to park it. It's also well below our maximum budget. Truly a bonus!

Oh, and I cannot forget the added bonus of having a friend living in the building. We met via FaceBook in one of the FB Groups for those of who have either already moved to, or are planning to move to, Portugal. It turns out he and his husband moved to Porto from LA last year. And they moved into one of the apartments below ours. I first figured it out because I recognized the view from his apartment he posted on FB. I was gobsmacked!

Now, we get the same view! And the same great apartment! Things really are falling into place. We are feeling very blessed with this apartment. We had hoped for a place where we could plant ourselves until it is time to buy a place in a few years, and it looks like we may have gotten just that.

1. The realtor was nice enough, but he had only been in Porto for a couple of years after living in New Jersey most of his life. I wanted somebody who had loads of experience if there was any chance of us getting this apartment. Portugal is a very relationship-based culture, so having someone who is well-established in the community can be important.

2. Brutalism is an architectural style of the 1950s and 1960s characterized by simple, block-like forms and raw concrete construction. It fell out of favor in the early to mid 1970s. Our building is clearly influenced by Brutalism.

3. It is quite common for housing to not have a built-in heating system. This was the case up until the past couple of decades or so. It is easy to forget that Portugal was (and still is) a poor country. Built-in heating was an expensive add on, and people just tended to heat one or two rooms at a time.

4. Portugal was under a dictatorship until the mid 1970s. The Revolução dos Cravos (Carnation Revolution) occurred on 25 April, 1974 in Lisboa when a military coup by left-leaning military officers overthrew the authoritarian Estado Novo government producing major social, economic, territorial, demographic, and political changes in Portugal and its overseas colonies through the Processo Revolucionário Em Curso. It resulted in the Portuguese transition to democracy and the end of the Portuguese Colonial War.

5. We currently live about 2 miles from City Hall here in Philly. Our current neighborhood is pretty residential, but within a 10-15 minute walk, we have more than 50 restaurants to choose from, and there are several grocery stores around. We basically walk everywhere. When we moved here, we bought a car. First time I have had a car since the early 1990s. Road trips aside, I have averaged only about 1,800 miles per year on our car since we bought it when we moved to Philly.

6. Just like the Jeffersons, this building was built at a time when better off families had live-in-help, and this apartment was designed for that.The ‘maid’ had her own bedroom off the kitchen with a small private bath. The apartment also kept the private areas (bedrooms and baths) very separate and behind closed doors away from the more public areas (entry, dining, and living room) This set-up is very similar to how our 1910 classic six apartment in Manhattan was built (separate maids quarters). Except that we only had half of the original apartment so no maids quarters for us.