Hi there,
In today’s post I tell you how the house search continues in the hope of finally getting something worthwhile.
Here are the first and second part of this post:
After looking at a lot of houses and none of them fit what we were looking for, we decided to give the land a chance with the idea of putting up a prefabricated house.
At the end of January 2025, we went to Vigo to see several plots of land in an area that was just across the border from Portugal to Spain.
We had asked to visit the one we liked the most first.
This plot seemed idyllic to us because it was high up on the mountain, overlooking the river and right next to where the forest began.
We visited 5 more plots, but this was the one we liked the most.
We then contacted the prefabricated house companies to see if we could find a company that would do everything: put up the house, foundations of the land, fencing, gate and access door to the property, administrative formalities, etc.
Then we had to see if the access road to the land was wide enough for the truck with the prefabricated house to pass.
When we started to review the websites of the companies, we saw first of all that it was not going to be as cheap as we thought.
In addition, the first two companies that responded to us told us that they only provided the house and that we had to do the rest ourselves.
The day after we contacted the prefab companies, a house appeared for 110,000 euros that was only one bedroom and one bathroom but with the possibility of building downstairs in the future.
I wanted the house to have at least 2 bathrooms, but considering the low supply of houses in the market and how real estate prices were, I was already starting to relax some of my requirements.
Believe it or not, properties fly even though we are in a crisis and most people can’t make ends meet.
We wrote immediately as we knew that this property would not last long on the market. The house was being sold because the couple was separating and after asking the usual questions, we arranged a visit for the following Saturday.
It was all new and clean. Despite being a loft, it was spacious, and I could leave it very nice.
Right next door there was a stone house in ruins that also came with the property for sale, which gave us the possibility of renovating it in the future.
It also had 3 plots of land.
The next day it was already sold.
That Saturday we saw two more houses but did not like them.
The following Monday we went to Ourense again to see a house that cost 69,000 euros. The day after we visited it, they told us that it had already been sold.
The house needed a lot of work, but it was something we could do ourselves and it was very well priced.
You think that by now we had already forgotten all the things that were a “must” at the beginning, such as, for example, that the house had two bathrooms.
Seeing how the offer was, the requirements had decreased and now the least we expected was that the house was moderately decent and that it did not need any renovation work.
On February 15 we went to visit 4 more houses. 2 in Ourense and 2 in Pontevedra.
The first house cost 95,000 euros.
This house was a complete disappointment and upon visiting it, we understood the price.
First, the upstairs was practically a kitchen because there was not even room for a sofa.
The trap was in the staircase that went down to a kind of cave that was the main room. It was a kind of tiny hole in the stone with steps that you could barely fit your feet in; you had to bend down to get into the tunnel that was the stairs. The living room was so small you couldn’t even fit the sofa.
As you can imagine, the owner did not put the photos of the stairs in the ad.
We continued with a house of 110,000 euros that we had initially discarded because it was too far away from Porto.
This house was not bad, and we could get it for 95,000 euros. The bad thing is that it needed a lot of work and it did not compensate for the 2h40 of travel.
In addition, the stairs in this house were not functional at all.
The house functioned as a tourist accommodation and the real estate agent told us that it was always fully booked; however, when we were leaving, the neighbour came to tell us that it was a lie and that it was rented very little. She also told us that the house had started at 125,000 euros and was not selling.
We went to the third house with hopes since, costing 130,000 euros, it had to be better than the previous two.
Another disappointment. The most absurd thing is that you had to leave the house in order to go up to the second floor. There was no staircase inside the house.
Being already the third house in which the worst thing was the staircase situation, we learned that in the future we always had to ask about the staircase and ask for photos.
Otherwise, the house needed to be demolished and rebuilt because there was nothing that could be saved.
In addition, the real estate agent, although friendly, was very annoying because she did not stop talking and would not let us leave.
Finally, we visited a 135,000 euros house.
The worst thing was the smell of cigarettes and dogs, and the dirt. In the garden there was also a very strong smell of dog excrement.
The visit to this house was torturous and I left with a headache and feeling dirty.
It was so disgusting that I didn’t even take pictures.
Although it was newly renovated, everything was too small and the view from the garden was of the dilapidated house and the neighbors’ garbage dump.
We ended the day depressed and angry that we had lost a day of our weekend because the house ads did not show the reality.
That night we went back to contact the owner of the loft style house that cost 110,000 euros. It seemed it had been sold, but when we asked him, he told us that he had it “reserved” and shortly after he activated the ad again.
We offered him 100,000 euros and he told us that he could go as high as 107,000 euros. Even so, with what we had seen, we knew it was a good investment.
We asked for all the documentation and sent it to our lawyer to see if everything was in order.
I will continue to tell you later how this odyssey continues.