Hello Mike,

you asked for:

>any suggestions as to how to source a long term tenant for my
>3 bed villa which is at Perola da Lagoa near Bom Sucesso.

Presumably you mean residential rather than longer term (winter)
tourist letting?

As always when marketing anything, the first step is to identify
your target markets, and this is where you might strike the
first problem. Most of the likely target markets for long term
rental are going to provide very low income expectations when
compared to tourist rental.

A tourist rental property if marketed well might produce ball
park figures of the order of 10k a year after management costs.
Not many local employees could afford to compete with that as
rent. If they could they would probably be buying their own
apartment.

Traditionally the coastal quality properties are rented to
tourists, and inland properties in the towns are rented to folk
who cannot afford to buy their own place and who want to rent
nearer to their work and schools for the children. There are a
lot of very low cost apartments available for rent in Caldas da
Rainha (150 to 300 Euros a month), which drives down the likely
rental income on a house to at best half the potential tourism
income.

I recently spoke to Nuno Luz at "Luz & Filho, Lda" who told me
they rented some houses in Gaeiras (a district of Obidos close
to Caldas and the new technology park in Obidos). He told me
that typical rents achieved there are no more than 450 Euros a
month.

As there is the distance from work and schools issue, anyone
willing to drive to work every day from Perola da Lagoa would
either need to be working nearby, or have a nice car and funds
to cover the fuel costs to get to work. That also makes it
likely that they would be able to buy their own place.

Anyway, it seems to me that this limits your probable target
markets to folk working in one of the nearby golf developments,
or someone from elsewhere in Europe who is looking to rent a
property for just a couple of years.

One such target market are retired folk in the UK and elsewhere
who want to live out here but do not want to commit to
purchasing here. I know that there are many pensioners who are
prepared to give up their rental home in the UK and live in the
sun on lower rent and a lower cost of living. But again, if they
are looking to reduce their rent that may limit your rental
income?

Even after all the media hype and exchange rate scares regarding
such folk living on the Spanish Costas suffering from the low
value of the pound, it's still cheaper to live here in Portugal
than in many other countries in Europe. So retirees from any of
the higher income Euro based countries are good target markets
for you.

>I can't seem to find many long term letting agents in the area.
>I assume there must be some covering Obidos/Caldas da Rainha
>etc.

I'd say there are far too many estate agents making it harder to
find one good place to recommend for you. Almost all the estate
agents I've met also arrange property rental. I'll mention a few
in this post not as recommendations for any one in particular
(or otherwise), but simply to give you a feel for the market.

For example, I noticed one ad from "Casinhas Rurais" (a Rio
Maior based agent) online recently which said they wanted rural
properties for rental clients, yet when I actually looked at
their web site today you would not know they do rentals as well
as sales.

Since the Silver Coast started to go into a boom and attract
lots of new estate agents to the area who are mostly interested
in property sales, it's the older traditional and well
established agents that you may be looking for if you want to
rent to locally based workers.

When I lived in Caldas I knew of a couple of agents in Bairro do
Ponte in Caldas (that's the road beside the railway lines behind
the Vivaci shopping centre) who were well known for handling
such rentals. One of those was "J A Simoes" a neighbour of mine
and a nice well respected family business who dealt with such
transactions. Although it has to be said that they would mostly
be dealing with apartments and houses in Caldas.

Many such private rental transactions are handled directly after
advertising in the local papers, and a contract is signed
between the parties on a standard form purchased from the
notary.

>Any advice would be very gratefully received.

If you are trying to deal with this from the UK you probably
need to have a local solicitor involved, and I can recommend you
to a friend if you like. Alternatively, as the law requires you
nominate an agent here for such matters connected with your
property, I suggest you contact Ennis Property Management and
have them manage your property and all such matters for you.

You might also consider building your own web site, and/or using
the many free ad sites like u4it to advertise the property for
rent.

However since your initial target market seems to be either
employees of the local golf courses, or non Portuguese on a
contract here, I'd say you should talk to the owners of those
courses and let them know your property is available for any
employee who might want to rent it.

Also you should contact any rental/estate agents who have a
significant world wide presence. Remax and Century21 come to
mind as being major players here in Caldas who are world-wide
agents.

You might get in contact with one local estate agent I know,
Jack, (who speaks perfect English), at "Rey Estates" who has
many contacts in the golf courses as he used to work for one of
them. He may be able to help you with some contacts.

Other English speaking agents I know who have contacts with
estate agents in the UK and Ireland include:-

Sharon Clarke at moveportugal.com
Nuno Constantino at topcasas.co.uk

Here is a link to a Google search for "casa para aluguer caldas
da rainha obidos" which is set up to exclude the holiday rentals
market word "ferias".

You can see by that link that there are lots of web sites
advertising houses for rent in the Portuguese language.

Here is a link discussing the rental laws on the Century21
website

novo-regime-de-arrendamento-urbano

which may help you. And here is their English translation of the
same information:-

rent-a-house/nrau

I hope this has given you some ideas to work with and feel free
to post again if you have further questions.

sincerely,
David

Silver Coast Property at:-
http://rainha.com/property/

David,

I just wanted to say thank you very much indeed for your
exceptionally helpful reply. I am going to follow most if not
all of your tips. You're a true gent and I owe you a pint!

Regards
Mike

Hello Mike,

you wrote:

>I am going to follow most if not all of your tips.

Please let me know which ones produced the best results, if any.
I may even decide to rent my own property long term if I hear
that you do well :-)

>You're a true gent and I owe you a pint!

Now you're talking. A pint of bitter would really go down a
treat - shame it's not on tap anywhere around here.

Regards,
David

Dear David,

As you said there are in fact many renting agents in the area:
most of the real estate agents.

Mike can also put his advert directly to one of the local news
papers:

www.gazetacaldas.com

and

www.jornaldascaldas.com

Hope I've been helpful.
Kindest Regards,

FL

Sou brasileiro, casado, aposentado, tenho 67 anos, gostariamos
de morar em Portugal e alugar uma casa de 3 quartos por 1 ano.

Podem nos ajudar?
Sds
Francisco

Translation:- I am married, retired, 67 years old, we would like
to live in Portugal and rent a 3 bedroom home for 1 year. Can
you help us?

Hello Francisco,

If you are not interested in renting my own apartment with
tennis and pool at:-

http://www.harleystreet.net/moinhos.html

then you should contact any rental/estate agents who have a
significant world wide presence. Remax and Century21 come to
mind as being major players here in Portugal who are world-wide
agents.

If you are particularly interested in this area of Portugal then
here is a link to a Google search for "casa para aluguer caldas
da rainha obidos" which is set up to exclude the holiday rentals
market word "ferias".

http://tinyurl.com/2dh68rv

You can see by that link that there are lots of web sites
advertising houses for rent in the Portuguese language.

You might also want to contact the folk at the "Portugal
Property List" who may be able to put you in contact with a
local agent:-

http://www.portugalpropertylist.com/

sincerely,
David

Translation:-

Olá Francisco,

Se você não está interessado em alugar meu próprio apartamento,
com tênis e piscina: -

http://tinyurl.com/258wy8g

então você deve contactar qualquer aluguer agentes / imobiliário
que têm um presença significativa do mundo inteiro. Remax e
Century21 vir a mente como sendo os principais agentes aqui em
Portugal que estão em todo o mundo agentes.

Se você está particularmente interessado nessa área de Portugal,
então aqui é um link para uma pesquisa no Google que está
configurado para excluir a palavra férias:-

http://tinyurl.com/2dh68rv

Você pode ver por esse link que existem muitos sites na web
no idioma Português.

Você também pode entrar em contato com o "Portugal Property
List" / "Lista de Imóveis Portugal", que pode ser capaz de
colocá-lo em contato com um agente local: -

http://tinyurl.com/2g3nqdl

Atenciosamente,
David

Silver Coast Propriedade em: -
http://rainha.com/property/

Silver Coast Property at:-
http://rainha.com/property/

Hi,

I have a 3 bed apartment near Obidos and I am looking to rent it out on a long term basis. Can you help?

Regards
Simon

Hello Simon,

I'm not sure whether you mean residential or long term tourist
letting?

Depending on the property you might earn more from it by renting
it to tourists. And yes, I can help with that by building and
promoting a web site for you to do that.

But if you mean residential then my post at

http://rainha.com/property/2009/09/long_term_rentals.shtml#comment-6854

has some of my best advice on the topic.

You might also want to contact the folk at the "Portugal
Property List" who will be able to put you in contact with a
local rental agent:-

http://www.portugalpropertylist.com/

sincerely,
David

http://harleystreet.net

6 month winter rental