# Property prices, whats happening?



## johnPaulnew

Hi, thanks for reading. A quick backstory, I have been living in Italy for the last few years, prior to that I lived in London which is where most of my work comes from. I recently made the decission to move to Portugal for familly reasons, the plan was to sell up my property in Tuscany and use the funds to purchase somewhere over here. 

I am currently renting a flat while I have a good look around and decide where I want to be and to get used to being here. First impressions are that Portugal is really a great spot, love the food, the people, the beaches, fantastic. But the one area I dont understand is property, in particular the prices. 

I am selling a three bedroomed Tuscan farmhouse in 1.5 ha, equal distance to the beach and the mountains to go skiing when the mood takes me. On the edge of a busy village with two good restraunts I can walk to, and walking distance to a train station that connects me to an international airport.

A couple of days ago I was shown a property between Lisbon and the coast in a similar location to my place in Italy and an almost identical price. The place was a wreck, the roof had collapsed, the floors were unsafe to stand on and the garden a lot smaller and it needed a total rebuild. A quick search shows me that there are at least six other houses close by that are on the market for equally crazy prices, every single one of these has been on the market for over two and a half years.

Now I have bought and sold a fair bit of property and my internal alarm bells are ringing at the moment. I can see huge variations in prices across the country from unexplainably expensive to crazy cheap. Why if property is so expensive can I see so many empty semi derelict properties? For me if Tuscany is begining to look like better value for money than Portugal, then Portugal has a problem, and It has the feeling of a bubble, where the usual rules of supply and demand are not working properly.

So, what I would like to know is what is going on here? what do people think?

Thanks for taking the time to read.


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## nb888

I think you have answered your own question, if they are overpriced then they will have been on the market for several years. The impression I get is there are plenty of sellers in Portugal as anywhere else that don't really care whether their property sells or not so they put it on at some high kite flying price hoping to sucker in some dewey eyed tourist with "sea views" aka a spot of water on the horizon or whatever. 
Looking at a few fincas for moving over there in a few years time, there appear to be plenty of bargains out there. Whether they are easily accessible, well linked to any facilities, or indeed even legal habitations is another matter. Equally there is plenty of overpriced dross. Who would have thought...


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## johnPaulnew

nb888 said:


> I think you have answered your own question, if they are overpriced then they will have been on the market for several years. The impression I get is there are plenty of sellers in Portugal as anywhere else that don't really care whether their property sells or not so they put it on at some high kite flying price hoping to sucker in some dewey eyed tourist with "sea views" aka a spot of water on the horizon or whatever.
> Looking at a few fincas for moving over there in a few years time, there appear to be plenty of bargains out there. Whether they are easily accessible, well linked to any facilities, or indeed even legal habitations is another matter. Equally there is plenty of overpriced dross. Who would have thought...


Yes I get your point, there are some really nice properties as you go north but my problem is that all my familly are in Lisbon so I am looking for somewhere around here. I am also loath to sell a good house in Tuscany for a smaller one here in a poorer location and without a roof.


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## John and Cecil

I have noticed that too, many properties are priced to never sell. I used to refer to this as "fishing for idiots" in the US. If you see a property listed by several real estate agencies at once then you are probably looking at a property being sold by one of these idiot fisherman. Instead of dropping their price they get more realtors to list the property. There is one property I saw that is listed by at least 8 real estate agencies, and they all post a cover photo of a different part of the house in the hopes you may not notice.The more listings you see for the same property, the more you know that you should not waste your time with it. 

IMO one of the main problems with the real estate market in Portugal is that when a home sells the information (address, price, pictures, and description) does not become online public information. In the USA you can go on a website (Redfin, Zillow, etc) and you can look at a map of the area and see all the homes that sold over the past few years. You can even click on the links and see the actual address, exact selling price, listing pictures from back when it was sold, and the property listing information. You can even see how long it was up for sale and if it ever fell out of contract during that time. 

What you have here because this information is kept secret is a real estate market saturated with over-priced properties. New sellers are listing their homes based on the asking prices of other homes on the market. If comparative sales data was readily available they would be basing their evaluations on that, but since comparative sales data is kept secret here most list their homes at a higher price and base their asking price on listing prices and not on actual sales prices. 

What you have here is a very inefficient market, and it adds a lot of stress and confusion to the sale and purchase of a home. In the US I can study sales data information and accurately evaluate real estate in any particular area in just a few weeks, however here it took me several months to even get a basic idea of the actual market value. 

I do not particularly care for life in the US but I must admit they have a much better real estate sales model!


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## Strontium

Hi and Welcome,
Similar observations/ questions to yours appear regularly on this forum, if you search a bit you'll find some and attempts at explanations why this is the situation here. There are things like younger people leaving the countryside/country and a lot of empty rural properties which the owner dies so it's ownership is then equally shared amongst any offspring (and their offspring) leading to a situation where many have to agree (and pay) or nothing gets done - like building maintence or reduction in asking price. Also if the house is over a certain age then it may be rebuilt with few building controls - sort of having planning permission without having to apply - where as more modern places need to approved and the builders have to be approved etc in a country which may indulge in random bureaucratic delays and obfuscation a bit of land which can be classed as "habitation" without any effort but it may look like just a building with a roof falling in. There are myriad of other things affecting the randomness of property prices here.


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## johnPaulnew

John and Cecil said:


> I have noticed that too, many properties are priced to never sell. I used to refer to this as "fishing for idiots" in the US. If you see a property listed by several real estate agencies at once then you are probably looking at a property being sold by one of these idiot fisherman. Instead of dropping their price they get more realtors to list the property. There is one property I saw that is listed by at least 8 real estate agencies, and they all post a cover photo of a different part of the house in the hopes you may not notice.The more listings you see for the same property, the more you know that you should not waste your time with it.
> 
> IMO one of the main problems with the real estate market in Portugal is that when a home sells the information (address, price, pictures, and description) does not become online public information. In the USA you can go on a website (Redfin, Zillow, etc) and you can look at a map of the area and see all the homes that sold over the past few years. You can even click on the links and see the actual address, exact selling price, listing pictures from back when it was sold, and the property listing information. You can even see how long it was up for sale and if it ever fell out of contract during that time.
> 
> What you have here because this information is kept secret is a real estate market saturated with over-priced properties. New sellers are listing their homes based on the asking prices of other homes on the market. If comparative sales data was readily available they would be basing their evaluations on that, but since comparative sales data is kept secret here most list their homes at a higher price and base their asking price on listing prices and not on actual sales prices.
> 
> What you have here is a very inefficient market, and it adds a lot of stress and confusion to the sale and purchase of a home. In the US I can study sales data information and accurately evaluate real estate in any particular area in just a few weeks, however here it took me several months to even get a basic idea of the actual market value.
> 
> I do not particularly care for life in the US but I must admit they have a much better real estate sales model!


I like the "fishing for idiots" nice.

In the Uk we have the same public information. You can find a complete history of a house in just a few clicks and it certainly helps when it comes to local prices.

Although you can do a few calculations to get an idea, I have rented a cheap flat near the centre of Lisbon, one near us has gone on the market for 500k a T2, my rent is 650/m for a T3, so say the same for that one at 650/m, thats 1.5% return based on on 100% rental, which never happens. Take inflation at .5% and interest at about 1.5% and you are basicly losing money. My guess is that it is probably overpriced by about double.

What I have noticed in Lisbon is that rents are plumeting, we arrived in October last year and we struggled to find somewhere at a reasonable price even with coronovirus, but now it is easy to get a good low cost flat, my guess is that rents have dropped by about 25-30%. 

It all sort of has the feel of a pyramid selling scheme, everything is fine as long as new money keeps coming in. The problem is when the music stops and everyone is trying not to be the one not holding the parcel.


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## johnPaulnew

Strontium said:


> Hi and Welcome,
> Similar observations/ questions to yours appear regularly on this forum, if you search a bit you'll find some and attempts at explanations why this is the situation here. There are things like younger people leaving the countryside/country and a lot of empty rural properties which the owner dies so it's ownership is then equally shared amongst any offspring (and their offspring) leading to a situation where many have to agree (and pay) or nothing gets done - like building maintence or reduction in asking price. Also if the house is over a certain age then it may be rebuilt with few building controls - sort of having planning permission without having to apply - where as more modern places need to approved and the builders have to be approved etc in a country which may indulge in random bureaucratic delays and obfuscation a bit of land which can be classed as "habitation" without any effort but it may look like just a building with a roof falling in. There are myriad of other things affecting the randomness of property prices here.


Yes good points, there are many similarities to Italy, I have two properties over there and my last purchase had twenty people on the deeds. And I understand your point about getting building permissions but when you compare like with like in other parts of europe then it looks unrealistic. 

I have property in the Garfagnana which is in the north of Tuscany, I have stunning views of the mountains, the beach in one direction and the Abetone ski resort in the other. I am close to Lucca, Pisa, Florence and Siena. A friend asked me if I could find him a building plot, I found someone with a old barn, derelict but with permission to demolish and build a T3 with a pool sitting on about half a hectare, price 50K euro. Yesterday I looked at a building plot, it was OK but the views were quite poor and there was no access road or services and a fair distance to the beach, asking price 170K euro. When I look at something here that is more than three times the price for something not as good then it does not add up.

The problem seems to be one of "irrational exuberance" to quote Alan Greenspan. The market has been driven by very rapid price rises, driven by too much money sloshing around, probably from the golden visa program.

This was a good idea when it was under control but now the market is hooked like a junkie, pricing now builds in big price increases each year. Its built into their bussiness model. Its difficult to get acurate numbers as they tend to be averaged over large areas but I think last year prices went up 12% in Lisbon and even more the year before. This means you make more from the price increase of a property than you do from its potential rental value, and this means it is in everyones interest to see this keep going.

Two things are probably going to happen that will change all this, one will be the end of the golden visa program, the other will be ECB interest rates going up in order to get all that money under control thats been injected because of coronovirus.

Personally I have decided to sit this one out for a while, I have a nice cheap flat and I will rent until the end of the year and after that I will make a decission on staying here or going back to Italy. One thing is for sure, I will not sell a nice house in a great location there, to live in a house here that is half the size, not as good and a lot more expensive.


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## John and Cecil

johnPaulnew said:


> Although you can do a few calculations to get an idea, I have rented a cheap flat near the centre of Lisbon, one near us has gone on the market for 500k a T2, my rent is 650/m for a T3, so say the same for that one at 650/m, thats 1.5% return based on on 100% rental, which never happens. Take inflation at .5% and interest at about 1.5% and you are basicly losing money. My guess is that it is probably overpriced by about double.


Wow, that is insane.  I have been investing in real estate for the past 20 years in the US. In the US much of the supply and demand fluctuations happen because of the unemployment rate. I would move from place to place every few years when prices dropped due to a significant rise in unemployment. I would buy a fixer and renovate it over a period of 2 to 4 years and then sell it (in the US if you hold a property for more than 2 years and it is your primary residence then all the profit you make, up to 250,000, is tax free).

I am reminded of the real estate bubble of 2006/2007 in the US. In California a 2 bedroom condo would have sold for 400,000 at the peak of the bubble in late 2006. I wanted to move there but the prices were not justified so instead I bought in a place where there are no jobs and thus there was no real estate bubble to safely sit it out. In 2011 the condo prices dropped to 200,000 (unemployment had skyrocketed to over 12%) so I sold and bought in California. In 2014 the unemployment rate was half as much and the condo was back up to close to 400,000. Houses were lagging behind condos so I sold the condo and bought a large fixer house nearby and held that for another 4 years until unemployment was under 3%.

I suspect the issue in Lisbon has a lot to do with the tax breaks Portugal is giving foreigners as an incentive to move here. Personally I would not touch a property that would rent for 650 but sell for 500,000. A 500,000 home in California would rent for 2500 a month (property taxes would be 5000/yr, but you would still net 25,000 a year before taxes). If I wanted to live in Lisbon I think I would try to negotiate a long term lease rather than buy. Better to buy a 200k home elsewhere and rent that out to pay the 650 rent in Lisbon. 

As for Italy (especially in the south) I think no jobs + no tax breaks = cheap real estate.  Places like Rome will be in demand, and Milan has more jobs. But small towns in Italy have no jobs and some towns are even selling homes that need to be renovated for 1 euro. You can buy a home in southern Italy in small towns where there are no jobs for cheap. I am considering it myself, after I move to Portugal I am considering picking up a cheap fixer in southern Italy to use as a winter home to escape some of the rain and colder weather for a few months. Actually Italy just started offering a tax break but only for foreigners collecting a pension. You have to move to southern Italy though and you must live in a municipality with less than 20,000 people. Italy is trying to do what Portugal did with the NHR but with not as big of a discount and not allowing you to claim it if you live in a larger city or if you move to the north where there are jobs.


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## johnPaulnew

John and Cecil said:


> Wow, that is insane.  I have been investing in real estate for the past 20 years in the US. In the US much of the supply and demand fluctuations happen because of the unemployment rate. I would move from place to place every few years when prices dropped due to a significant rise in unemployment. I would buy a fixer and renovate it over a period of 2 to 4 years and then sell it (in the US if you hold a property for more than 2 years and it is your primary residence then all the profit you make, up to 250,000, is tax free).
> 
> I am reminded of the real estate bubble of 2006/2007 in the US. In California a 2 bedroom condo would have sold for 400,000 at the peak of the bubble in late 2006. I wanted to move there but the prices were not justified so instead I bought in a place where there are no jobs and thus there was no real estate bubble to safely sit it out. In 2011 the condo prices dropped to 200,000 (unemployment had skyrocketed to over 12%) so I sold and bought in California. In 2014 the unemployment rate was half as much and the condo was back up to close to 400,000. Houses were lagging behind condos so I sold the condo and bought a large fixer house nearby and held that for another 4 years until unemployment was under 3%.
> 
> I suspect the issue in Lisbon has a lot to do with the tax breaks Portugal is giving foreigners as an incentive to move here. Personally I would not touch a property that would rent for 650 but sell for 500,000. A 500,000 home in California would rent for 2500 a month (property taxes would be 5000/yr, but you would still net 25,000 a year before taxes). If I wanted to live in Lisbon I think I would try to negotiate a long term lease rather than buy. Better to buy a 200k home elsewhere and rent that out to pay the 650 rent in Lisbon.
> 
> As for Italy (especially in the south) I think no jobs + no tax breaks = cheap real estate.  Places like Rome will be in demand, and Milan has more jobs. But small towns in Italy have no jobs and some towns are even selling homes that need to be renovated for 1 euro. You can buy a home in southern Italy in small towns where there are no jobs for cheap. I am considering it myself, after I move to Portugal I am considering picking up a cheap fixer in southern Italy to use as a winter home to escape some of the rain and colder weather for a few months. Actually Italy just started offering a tax break but only for foreigners collecting a pension. You have to move to southern Italy though and you must live in a municipality with less than 20,000 people. Italy is trying to do what Portugal did with the NHR but with not as big of a discount and not allowing you to claim it if you live in a larger city or if you move to the north where there are jobs.


A couple of pointers for Italy, check out this:



https://www.idealista.it/en/news/financial-advice-in-italy/2020/06/17/2842-italys-110-ecobonus



This is the Eco Bonus scheme being run by the Italian government to put money into local building companies. They provide 110% grants for building work that produces improvements in energy efficiency. Friends of mine have just been approved for 160K funding on their house, new doors, windows, thermal insulation, reversible ground source heat pumps so they do both air conditioning and heating and a massive array of PV panels to power it. But beware, the paperwork is huge, 45 seperate forms are needed just to start the process. If you want to do it find a big building company and they get all the work in exchange. You might almost be better off finding the building company first, then looking for a house near enough to them to get them to do the work. They will have their own specialists and gometras.

Also, just be aware of the hidden costs, to initiate a project you will need to pay around 12-15k start up fees, and around another 8k to get everything signed off at the end. I had to employ three engineers, first one to do the design, the second one to check the first one, and the third one from the commune who checked on the first two, but I had to pay for them all.

There are certificates for everything, you have a safety line on your roof, thats 100euro, you have a chimney thats 100euro, you have a boiler thats 100euro, you have a woodburner, thats 100euro, each one is renewed each year.

Here is a funny thing you see, if you are looking at ads for houses, take a good look at the stove. You might notice things like decorative flowers on the inside. They are there so if someone comes round to inspect they go " dont worry about that, its not worked for years, look its got flowers inside"


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## John and Cecil

Yikes. I will need to look into the certificates. I hate those kinds of things. The grants probably will not help me though, I do all my own work (masonry, carpentry, electrical, plumbing, kitchens, bath, flooring, drywall, heating, design, light architecture and engineering, etc). I am a one man crew (plus a dog). I even installed long 5m sections of 6" crown moulding throughout a 250m2 house without a helper.


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## johnPaulnew

John and Cecil said:


> Yikes. I will need to look into the certificates. I hate those kinds of things. The grants probably will not help me though, I do all my own work (masonry, carpentry, electrical, plumbing, kitchens, bath, flooring, drywall, heating, design, light architecture and engineering, etc). I am a one man crew (plus a dog). I even installed long 5m sections of 6" crown moulding throughout a 250m2 house without a helper.


Yes you will need to make a few decissions, first one is how long are you going to stay? you can buy a house with a habitation certificate and is considered to be a legal property. Or you can buy a rustico, out in the woods where no one can see you and then you can just do your own thing. It will not be a legal property, you will not be able to use the address for residency or anything like that but if you are after a place to use for say 3 or 4 months of the year then it makes sense. As a forigner, on a house you will pay IMU at about 1200euro a year, plus rubbish collection tax of about 250euro, in addition most of your electricity and water bills are made up of fees and taxes so even if you are not there you will still be looking at about 30euro a month in bills. So all in you have about 2250 euro a year in costs.

A rustico is usually cheaper to buy but it needs to be in the middle of nowhere so you dont have too many nosy neighbours. I had one for eleven years and I rebuilt the roof and all the floors, put in solar panels and batteries, and water from a spring behind the house. But I was 8km up a dirt track, park the car, go down to the bottom of the valley, zip wire over the stream/river depending on the time of year, then 100m up a steep path to get to the house. But I had 12hectares of old forest to play in and more wildlife/m2 than probably anywhere else in europe. All the locals knew I was up there, but they all have there own secrets so no one is going to draw attention to you. I had arrangements with the local goat/sheep herders for them to graze there goats and sheep in my woods, and they keep an eye on my house. Never got broken into and nothing ever went missing.

Just to go back to what we were discussing before, I came across a nice example of prices in Lisbon. My daughter lives in Anjos, a trendy part of town. There is a block over the road that has been complety renovated, they are advertising a mix of apartments, but lets look at a T2, thats on the market for 575K euro, its 780m2. Being generous based on what I know is up for rent at the moment lets say 1000/m rental. That produces a return on capital 2%.

I have a T3 of 110m2 in a very cool part of south east London, I have it rented out at below market value because I like to have people in who feel lucky to be there and will look after it. My rental income in euros is 26K per anum, I bought it five years ago and it has gone up in value, I would say it is worth approx 800K, this represents 3.25% return, but if I was more agressive on my pricing I could probably push that to 3.8%. 

I rest my case.


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## hktoportugal

Not quite sure what case you are trying to make. Everyone knows that Lisbon is expensive to buy versus let at the moment. We have a few apartments in Porto, the last one I bought this year. Our nett yield on those is close to 7% and these are brand new, high quality apartments. We looked at Lisbon too when we started to look three years ago but even then they were simply too expensive to buy for the rental market. That doesn't mean that Portugal is not a good place to invest in, you just need to know where and what to buy. And if you want to live in Lisbon then you shouldn't really focus on the yield, as it is for living and not to rent out. Compared to many other European capital cities the price of Lisbon is still cheap.... but again, that is if you want to live there. If you are looking purely for rental yield then look elsewhere.


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## MikeJohn

John and Cecil said:


> Personally I would not touch a property that would rent for 650 but sell for 500,000. A 500,000 home in California would rent for 2500 a month (property taxes would be 5000/yr, but you would still net 25,000 a year before taxes).


For a 500k property , assume rent 650/month can get 5000/year after tax ? so price/annual return is 100 at PT, if at US the rent income 25k/year after tax, price/annual return is 20 at US. 
PT's property market is crazy over priced , imho.


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## hktoportugal

Wow ... you just joined the forum to state that the property market in PT is crazily overpriced? Let me try to put that in perspective. In Lisbon the market is crazy in many areas and you need to cherry pick if you want to make a decent return. Reason why we didn't buy anything in Lisbon. But Lisbon is not Portugal...it's a bit like saying that the property market in the US is crazy over priced when you look at a section of downtown Manhattan. We recently bought another property, brand new, in Porto. Acquisition price less than 200K, annual rent 11K after tax. The example John and Cecil gave by the way was 25.000 BEFORE tax, not after tax. Most people buy in Portugal though to live, it is a wonderful country, in the top 3 of the safest countries in the world to live.


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## John and Cecil

hktoportugal said:


> Wow ... you just joined the forum to state that the property market in PT is crazily overpriced? Let me try to put that in perspective. In Lisbon the market is crazy in many areas and you need to cherry pick if you want to make a decent return. Reason why we didn't buy anything in Lisbon. But Lisbon is not Portugal...it's a bit like saying that the property market in the US is crazy over priced when you look at a section of downtown Manhattan. We recently bought another property, brand new, in Porto. Acquisition price less than 200K, annual rent 11K after tax. The example John and Cecil gave by the way was 25.000 BEFORE tax, not after tax. Most people buy in Portugal though to live, it is a wonderful country, in the top 3 of the safest countries in the world to live.



I agree that it is very lovely here. It rains a lot in Northern Portugal during the winter but being here is like using Mr Peabody's Wayback Machine and escaping today's world. At least that is how it feels after living in places near Los Angeles and New York. The prices are reasonable in some parts of Portugal. The real estate market is terribly inefficient though, people need public access to comparative home sales data. Sellers and buyers need to be able to quickly and accurately determine market value for a home, that will help the real estate market become more efficient and attract more buyers and sellers. Here I think many sellers price their homes higher and wait for the market to catch up to their chosen price, but what happens when market value drops or stays the same? I believe the market gets stagnant and homes sit on the market for many years, even when there are buyers actively looking for homes. Public access to comparative home sale data is necessary to educate buyers and sellers to understand the current market prices. Seeing actual sales prices along with pictures and the property advertisement makes it easy for regular people to ascertain market value for themselves. Most sellers here appear to be using listing prices as current market price, yet I have found it is very common here for sellers to negotiate down 10 to 20% lower on a home. This this does not happen in an efficiently run real estate market such as the system in place in the USA. In the USA a majority of sellers will only negotiate down maybe 5%, and 10% is rare (at least without an inspection report in hand which finds major issues with the home). What took me 9 months to understand here I could have learned in 2 weeks with public access to comparative sales data elsewhere. What does this mean? There are a lot more buyers that would be buying here but they are either waiting until they understand the market value or they got spooked and moved on to another place where actual market value is not kept secret. 

It is not just the high prices that is the problem, it is the fact that true market value here is kept secret from potential buyers. And the higher the prices in a particular area the more this comes into play. This issue alone chases some buyers away which reduces demand, and that is a bad thing for the real estate market (especially one with a lot of vacant homes). I guess this is the price one must pay when using a time machine.


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## ceanothus

johnPaulnew said:


> I like the "fishing for idiots" nice.
> 
> In the Uk we have the same public information. You can find a complete history of a house in just a few clicks and it certainly helps when it comes to local prices.
> 
> Although you can do a few calculations to get an idea, I have rented a cheap flat near the centre of Lisbon, one near us has gone on the market for 500k a T2, my rent is 650/m for a T3, so say the same for that one at 650/m, thats 1.5% return based on on 100% rental, which never happens. Take inflation at .5% and interest at about 1.5% and you are basicly losing money. My guess is that it is probably overpriced by about double.
> 
> What I have noticed in Lisbon is that rents are plumeting, we arrived in October last year and we struggled to find somewhere at a reasonable price even with coronovirus, but now it is easy to get a good low cost flat, my guess is that rents have dropped by about 25-30%.
> 
> It all sort of has the feel of a pyramid selling scheme, everything is fine as long as new money keeps coming in. The problem is when the music stops and everyone is trying not to be the one not holding the parcel.


New to this forum and currently living in Lisbon. May I be nosy and ask how you found a T3 for 650/m? You must have awesome dwelling karma! I have been looking for months, as have friends, and we are dismayed at the prices and the junk you get for it. Also, my very tiny 2 cents: Don't sell your Tuscan home. It sounds like an awesome situation I think would be very hard to duplicate or even come close to here.


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## johnPaulnew

ceanothus said:


> New to this forum and currently living in Lisbon. May I be nosy and ask how you found a T3 for 650/m? You must have awesome dwelling karma! I have been looking for months, as have friends, and we are dismayed at the prices and the junk you get for it. Also, my very tiny 2 cents: Don't sell your Tuscan home. It sounds like an awesome situation I think would be very hard to duplicate or even come close to here.


Yes I think things have changed a lot in the last few months, we were looking for a low cost flat for our application for residency, this was last November and things were a lot tighter back then. We viewed the property at the weekend and we had to que to see it, and at the time we were lucky to find one. We pay 650 a month, here is a link to a another one in the same building.



https://www.idealista.pt/en/imovel/31112464/



Ours is quite a bit rougher than this one, the windows barely fit, the bathroom is terrible and the kitchen has seen better days. But we dont spend all our time there so I can live with it. I think our bedrooms are bigger than the one in the ad. That one has been completly renovated, new windows, kitchen and bathroom repainted and floors revarnished. There is a big T2 next to us with a huge living room and big bedrooms but needs quite a bit of work and is going for 500 a month in its current state, and I know of several empty flats in the streets around us for similar prices.

As for Italy, I am also having second thoughts about seling my place, I have it advertised and have some pretty solid inquieries but I am just not going to sell a fantastic place for somewhere which is the same price but no where near as good. If you are interested this is my place in Italy.



https://www.idealista.it/en/immobile/21610189/



Trees as far as the eye can see, and not a single one of them is eucalyptus.


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## ceanothus

johnPaulnew said:


> Yes I think things have changed a lot in the last few months, we were looking for a low cost flat for our application for residency, this was last November and things were a lot tighter back then. We viewed the property at the weekend and we had to que to see it, and at the time we were lucky to find one. We pay 650 a month, here is a link to a another one in the same building.
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.idealista.pt/en/imovel/31112464/
> 
> 
> 
> Ours is quite a bit rougher than this one, the windows barely fit, the bathroom is terrible and the kitchen has seen better days. But we dont spend all our time there so I can live with it. I think our bedrooms are bigger than the one in the ad. That one has been completly renovated, new windows, kitchen and bathroom repainted and floors revarnished. There is a big T2 next to us with a huge living room and big bedrooms but needs quite a bit of work and is going for 500 a month in its current state, and I know of several empty flats in the streets around us for similar prices.
> 
> As for Italy, I am also having second thoughts about seling my place, I have it advertised and have some pretty solid inquieries but I am just not going to sell a fantastic place for somewhere which is the same price but no where near as good. If you are interested this is my place in Italy.
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.idealista.it/en/immobile/21610189/
> 
> 
> 
> Trees as far as the eye can see, and not a single one of them is eucalyptus.


Thank you very much for the apartment link. No bathtub, which I've noticed often goes away when a place gets "renovated". Thanks also for the tip of vacant flats. I'll wander around and jot down phone numbers if I see rental signs. 

And your house!! It's beautiful. The location is gorgeous. The Lucca area was my first choice and still in my heart. I hope you won't have to sell. 

I think Portugal has been bitten by the money bug and is drunk with dreams of getting rich these days. Unfortunately, the properties are not on par with the prices, yet wide-eyed people keep pouring in, paying whatever is asked.


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