Real Estate News

There are two pieces of good news about our real estate in Portugal.  The first is that we closed on the sale of our San Pedro apartment, which was newly constructed but never lived in by us.  The second piece of news is that we have contracted to buy a home in Tavira!

Our original goal was to buy a home that would give us outdoor space for Ryder and more indoor room for us.  But to achieve this, we assumed we would need to be outside of the city of Tavira, since most residences here are apartments or small homes.  But as we looked at available properties, we found that there were a small number of places in our price range that met our goals but were still in the city.  In fact, the home we settled upon is only about 200 meters from our current apartment.  

Of the two starred properties in the image above, our current apartment is on Rua Avelino Dias Custódio, while our next house is on Rua Major Victor Castela.  This townhome also is in a quiet, established Tavira neighborhood, Mato Santo Espirito, which has a couple of restaurants and cafés.

Our next place is a townhouse, with one attached wall.  But it has a decent amount of outdoor space, including a pool and garden in a completely fenced yard.

The inside area of the house is 160 sq. meter (over 1700 sq. ft.), which is about twice the size of our current apartment.  The ground floor consists of a living room, dining area, kitchen, bathroom/laundry room, and enclosed garage.  The next floor has four bedrooms, one en-suite, and another shared bathroom.  One of the bedrooms is currently used as an office.  The top floor has a rooftop terrace with distant sea views.  There is even a basement (a rarity in Tavira) which houses the pool equipment and more storage area.

The sellers of this house are moving back to their native France, so we are going to be keeping most of the furniture.  This is good since the buyers of our current apartment wanted to keep most of the furniture we have there.  

We expect to close the sale on our current apartment in late September and then rent it back for 30 days.  We then plan to close on the sale of this townhouse in early October, giving us plenty of time to do any touch-ups (painting, etc.) and then to move in our belongings.  Fingers crossed that it all goes smoothly.  We are excited about our new place!