Tips to find your own apartment/house in Portugal – Where do you need to start?!

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Tips to find your own apartment/house in Portugal – Where do you need to start?!

Hi, I am Iris (Dutch) and I work and live in Portugal since the 27th of August 2019. The first months I lived in a shared apartment, provided by the company that I worked for. After six months I was a bit tired to share the bathroom and the living room and trying to not make too much noise. When my Portuguese boyfriend also lived in the same room full-time, it was time to make a decision: find a little palace just for the 2 of us! Finding a place can be a bit difficult, so I would like to share some tips with you.


Find out in which area you want to live

The first step, is the most important step: where do you want to live? Find out which area suits your preferences and also your budget. If you want to live in a big apartment with a swimming pool in the middle of the center of Lisbon, you will need to have a big wallet filled with money. Be also careful with really cheap places, because this can be located in the more 'dangerous' areas.  If you want my advice: look for a nice place outside of the center. Most places outside of the city, have great public transports to the big cities and are mostly cheaper. I can personally recommend Almada if you want to live close to Lisbon. 

Take a look at the websites that offers houses

A good way to see all the offers of houses in your preferred live area is to take a look at certain websites. They show you right away the information that you need and you can directly contact the firm/person that rents the place that you like. Below I'd like to share my favorite websites to find a place:

https://www.idealista.pt/ 

https://www.olx.pt/imoveis/

https://www.imovirtual.com/

https://www.uniplaces.com/

Use your connections!

Some landlords don't put the house on a website. In this way, it can be good to use your connections. Tell people that you are looking for a place and ask them to keep their eyes open for you (10 people see more than 1). We found our place in this way. We told a lot of people that we were looking for an apartment and after a few weeks, someone gave us the number of the person that rented the house (thank you again 'tio' José!).

Use Facebook pages 

Nowadays, social media is the key to find things and achieving things. For example, there are a lot of Facebook pages that are offering houses at different prices and locations. Also, if you are looking for just a room, this is the perfect place to be. Try the next ones:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1997343857225527 (Lisbon Apartments/Rooms/Houses for Rent/Sale).

https://www.facebook.com/portugalhomeslisbon

Stay for 1 month at an Airbnb

If you don't like it to be stuck in one place (so this one is for the more adventurous people) you can also decide to rent an Airbnb for 1 month. Now with the pandemic, everyone is working from home, so it is not that you need to be close to your work. You could make a cool experience out of this. Discover every month a new place! The downside of renting for 1 month is that you need to move a lot, but if you can't find anything, it is a good alternative. For more information, you can go to the following website: https://www.airbnb.com/


We are very happy in our little palace. It is not so big, but it has everything that we need and a park in front of our place (where we see regularly some action). Our next step? First, we are enjoying our time here and hopefully, after a year we can buy our place and live happily after ever.

Love, Iris

Locatie: Portugal Almada, Portugal

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