So a while back I posted about a very steep piece of
land in Mamede, Portugal that we were considering buying.
https://permies.com/t/173409/Steep-Steep
Long story short, we went to visit it and the steepness was unbelievable. Much more precipitous than it looks in the photos. Even walking it was a challenge and impossible in about half the entire property - basically a few degrees off being a cliff-face. What's more, the house had subsidence and seemed to be slipping off the mountain (bulging, pot-bellied walls; big cracks). I don't blame it. We decided it was altogether too much.
With nothing else in that region within our price range, we started looking further North. The recent heatwaves, droughts and wildfires in Portugal mean that being somewhere further North with lots of
water is not a bad idea at all in the long run.
We have learned a lot about Portuguese property laws which might be of use to others, since a lot of people seem to be drawn to it as a good place to find cheap land and settle down to pursue their homesteading dream. Some cliff-notes, gleaned from a few months of frustration:
1. Portuguese properties have an important designation which you must pay attention to. They are either 'rural', 'urban' or 'mixed' (meaning the property has both urban and rural designated parts).
2. You
can't get a normal
mortgage to buy 'rural'-designated (i.e. agricultural) land - it has to be registered 'urban' (even if it's not actually in a town). In this case 'urban' means that it's approved for full-time human habitation.
3. Yes, there are a lot of very cheap buildings in Portugal with piles of land that may look too good to be true for foreigners who want to come and do
permaculture on a small budget... But if you check the property's designation, more often than not you will see that the building/s are registered as 'apoios a agricultura' (agricultural support building) and the land is designated 'rural'. Even if they are done-up just like a house, with bedrooms, kitchen etc., as many are. Don't be fooled. A lot of Portuguese tend to use these places as a kind of family holiday home, or stay in them while they work the land on a seasonal basis, etc. But they are not legally inhabitable as a primary abode.
As I've said, the bank won't mortgage an apoio agricultura (so you'd need to be able to purchase it outright if you wanted one of these places), but more importantly the rural designation means that you would not technically, legally be allowed to live there. You can be fined if you do so. Changing the designation is difficult, expensive and can be a very lengthy process. A lot of foreigners get caught out by this. You will see many broken-dream type properties for sale that may look great, and a lot of the time even have half-finshed
permaculture projects on them (
cob buildings, potagers,
compost loos etc.) but what they don't mention in the listing is that the reason they are selling is because they were (unknowingly or intentionally) illegally 'dwelling' in a non-urban-designated property. Maybe locals reported it to the council; they weren't able to get it approved for full-time habitation or for agro-tourism, weren't able to get planning permission to build a house or perhaps weren't able to legalise their cob house and outdoor loos or whatever (Portuguese law tends not to consider cob buildings legitimate/suitable for habitation), or something along those lines.
The banks and estate agents both told us this is very common with foreigners buying in these remote areas and warned us not to make these mistakes. Don't get caught out.
4. In order to be mortgage-able, the property must be 'urban' and must consist of a house which the bank deems 'habitable' (which means, at minimum, having a fully plumbed-in bathroom, kitchen + electricity connected to it). If you don't need a mortgage, this isn't an issue. If you do need a mortgage, and were thinking of buying a rustic, somewhat ramshackle property to renovate, then this could potentially be a stumbling block for you, as it was for us.
5. As a non-resident foreigner, even in a joint mortgage with a Portuguese national, you need to have a 30% deposit. Even if you do not already have a house (in any country) and fully intend to live in the house you're buying as your primary residence,
if you are not already resident in Portugal at the time of purchase then you will have to buy it as a 'second home'. Second home mortgages have worse rates and require a higher deposit. The rates can be recalculated, however, once you are resident.
.....
Once we'd learned these things and conversed with banks, it became clear that getting a mortgage to buy a rural ruin with gallons of land around it was basically impossible for us. Even with a massive deposit, they simply couldn't/wouldn't mortgage such a place. We tried five banks.
We have now had to readjust our sights and look for an 'urban'-classified property that that bank would deem both habitable and mortgageable. Properties in habitable condition are obviously much more expensive than shacks and ruins and tend not to have much land when within our price range, so our new approach is to purchase a house that's legal to inhabit, and then buy more agricultural land seperately (which can be super cheap in the right places, like 5,000-10,000 euroes if it doesn't have any likelihood of planning permission and you don't need it).
We reckon we've found somewhere in Western Serra da Estrela. The 'habitable' house only has about 1,600m2, but it has a very deep well, mature fruit
trees and vines and a public watercourse that runs through the land for an hour a day. There are also grazing rights on the mountain and a large pasture for sale on the other side of the road.
I will leave the above bullet points for anyone considering buying and inhabiting rural land in Portugal and will update this
thread if we move forwards with the purchase of this property (we're hoping to sign in September). I will be looking for potager planning tips and feedback on a design for the garden.
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