Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome back to Truly Expat Podcast. My name is Rachel and with me in Paula, and together we share stories, insights and advice from expats around the world. Today, we are joined by Josh from Expats Everywhere, a platform dedicated to helping people navigate life abroad. Josh has lived in multiple countries and built thriving communities of expats who share their experiences and tips on making the most of life overseas. In this episode, we'll dive into his expat journey, the biggest lessons he's learned and his advice for anyone thinking about making the move to Portugal. Whether you're a seasoned expat or just starting to explore the idea living abroad, this conversation is packed with vegetable, sorry valuable insights. Let's get started, Welcome.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Josh.

Speaker 3: 1:00

Thank you. Thank you, I'm happy to be here, vegetables and all.

Speaker 2: 1:17

I'm excited to have you all because I'm really I'm not only really excited about hearing about Portugal, but I'm also really excited about hearing about expats everywhere. So let's get started. How did you get to?

Speaker 1: 1:24

Portugal first. Yeah, tell us about it yourself.

Speaker 3: 1:33

Yeah, so thank you so much for the lovely introduction. I guess our expat journey to Portugal started actually when my wife and I moved to Spain, and Spain and Portugal are neighbors, despite what some people think.

Speaker 3: 1:41

Many people couldn't identify Portugal on a map about 10 years ago, but it's picked up in popularity for sure. But essentially we moved to Madrid, spain, and one of the cheapest Ryanair or EasyJet flights was to get over to Portugal. So we found ourselves in Portugal quite a bit and the very first time that we set foot in Porto specifically, we were like wow, this place is amazing, it's magical. The people were quite friendly. We were able, you know, at the time and it's really funny for me to think about this now and I haven't done, I haven't thought about this until this very moment but so we weren't sure about the English levels when we got here.

Speaker 3: 2:20

We didn't know, you know, how good people were at speaking English. So because we had a bit of Spanish in our back pocket, living in Spain, we tended to speak or try to engage people in Spanish. Now, I know that's a massive faux pas. Like most Portuguese people would prefer, if you're going to speak another language to them, other, uh, english would be preferred. I think a lot of that comes down to like many people confuse the fact that Portugal has its own language called Portuguese, and they just think that Portuguese people speak Spanish. So they don't want uh, they don't want people to just make that assumption, I think uh, I'm pretty.

Speaker 3: 3:04

I'm pretty sure I did that with people all those years ago.

Speaker 3: 3:08

Literally never, literally never processed that until this moment, yeah, but when my wife and I, when my wife and I landed here in Porto, we we really liked it and we thought, you know, one day we'll move here and we actually started. You know, on that first trip we started to look at, like, what would the process be like? And at the time there was very little pathway for Americans, especially for what we were doing, because at the time we were English teachers. There was very little pathway for us to actually make it happen because we would essentially need to get hired with an international school, an American international school that could sponsor our visas and everything, and we were just starting out our teaching careers, so we weren't really at the level to get those kinds of jobs. And in private schools and academies that taught English they didn't need Americans because Brits could move to Portugal or could live in Portugal visa-free, so there was no barrier for them.

Speaker 3: 4:12

At the time. Brexit changed all that. But even before Brexit, the introduction of the D7 visa also changed that. That Once the D7 was opened up and I want to say that was in 2012, just a couple of years after Katie and I made our first visit here it really opened things up to Americans, but Americans hadn't really discovered Portugal for another, probably seven to 10 years.

Speaker 2: 4:38

Oh, wow.

Speaker 3: 4:39

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:41

And so where did you come from when you moved to Spain? Originally From the US.

Speaker 3: 4:48

Yeah, so Spain was the first country that my wife and I moved abroad to, and you know it's been a 15-year journey. But I'm originally from the border of Virginia and Tennessee and my wife was born in Arizona but grew up in Florida and we kind of moved after she finished university and started our expat journey, which has taken us from Spain to South Korea, saudi Arabia, singapore which is our connection with you guys and then on to Portugal.

Speaker 2: 5:18

Oh wow, You've been everywhere. You really have been everywhere.

Speaker 3: 5:21

I didn't realize that you lived in.

Speaker 2: 5:23

I lived in Seoul as well. Many moons ago.

Speaker 3: 5:26

Ah okay, we were in Busan.

Speaker 2: 5:29

Oh, wow, okay, yes, yeah, yeah, wow.

Speaker 1: 5:32

Busan's lovely yeah.

Speaker 3: 5:34

I love it.

Speaker 1: 5:35

It's like a giant fish tank. There's massive fish markets right Like you know, there's just fish everywhere. It's amazing yeah that's true.

Speaker 3: 5:54

So then, what is Expats Everywhere then? So Expats Everywhere started out as a really like, in its infancy, as a consultancy, because, like you said, we had, we had lived everywhere, we we actually had started growing our network of people that we knew, that had lived in all sorts of places, and we were like, let's, how can we leverage this? Because people in our like, let's say, our social circle, that didn't live abroad, they always knew someone that was interested in moving abroad and they're like oh well, you know either my friends or my family, they, they are doing this whole thing. And then they would be like can you talk to so-and-so about how to move abroad? So we got so many of those requests and we were just like no, let's just do like consultations and and actually get paid for our time in this.

Speaker 3: 6:38

In this regard, um, how expats everywhere came really about, though, was when we were moving from Saudi to Singapore. It was just like six months after we had arrived in Saudi, and it was like we were doing the whole process over again, having to research all the things that you need to research to make a move happen, and I thought to myself I would pay somebody to do this. I was just exhausted, I hadn't recovered from moving to Saudi yet, and then I was about to have to do it again and I, you know, a light bulb went off and I was like, you know, if somebody would, if I would pay somebody, somebody might pay me. And that was really kind of the massive spark and we decided to start a YouTube channel. We were very stupid and we decided to start a YouTube channel. We were very stupid. We were like let's start a YouTube channel and that's how we'll get lead generation. We'll interview all of these people in our network that we know that are living abroad and talk about their move abroad.

Speaker 3: 7:38

And it started like that the YouTube channel. We still have most of those videos up and people can go back and see if they want to have a good laugh about how bad the quality was. We didn't know what we were doing, but but we, you know, we we did the thing. And as the years passed by, kind of in what the business was, we realized that we preferred the YouTube thing versus the, versus the consultation side of things, and we decided to go all in on YouTube and we started to, you know, like, pay for consultations on how to get better at YouTube, ah, and take courses and buy better gear and all of that. And then the channel kind of took off around 2020. And it's been great.

Speaker 2: 8:26

It's quite interesting because I've watched um quite a few of the episodes and they're um, they're quite a lot of information. You know all the stuff that you need to know when you move to a place, whether it's scotland or portugal or wherever, um which when I first started traveling, or was I started out as an expat 18 years ago.

Speaker 3: 8:43

There's nothing like that no, yeah, no, you're right taiwan right oh yeah, you know what rachel's laughing?

Speaker 2: 8:52

because I went. I was green. I moved to taiwan. Think I was going to thailand. I thought I was laying on a beach chicken margaritas, but I was not that's hilarious yeah. Yeah, that wasn't for me, but yeah, that's a good story.

Speaker 3: 9:09

I mean I've heard about people hot flights thinking they're going to london you know england and they end up in canada or sydney in canada, rather than sydney, australia, australia, australia instead of australia, right?

Speaker 1: 9:24

don't they have a desk specially, or something? Yeah?

Speaker 3: 9:29

They arrive in Austria.

Speaker 2: 9:30

Yeah, welcome.

Speaker 1: 9:36

These people exist everywhere.

Speaker 2: 9:41

So getting back to Portugal, so you're in Portugal now, yeah, what are some of the most popular areas for expats to live in Portugal?

Speaker 3: 10:38

Well for sure, over the years, algarve, which is a region it's the southernmost region and Lisbon.

Speaker 2: 10:46

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 10:47

And then there are a couple other places that are really growing in popularity. You know, one of the places that, let's say, is popular but doesn't get a lot of people moving there for whatever reason, is the Silver Coast, and a huge benefit of the Silver Coast is that you do have expat communities, so that's a good thing. But you don't have it's not overrun with expats. So you you don't tend to find that you're just swapping one life for another, like you can actually experience the cult, the new culture that you're in, maybe the downside to a place like silver coast.

Speaker 3: 11:26

For people that are like big beach goers is that the the weather and climate is not as good as algarve. Algarve tends to have much more, uh, much more sunny days, less rainy days, that that kind of element to it, and warmer it's warmer.

Speaker 1: 11:50

So where is this? Sorry. Where is the silver case? Yes, silver coast, sorry, silver coast, yeah.

Speaker 3: 12:00

Where's the case? It's between Lisbon and Porto, so Lisbon's kind of, let's say, the center part of the country, but on the western coastline part of the country, but on the, the western coastline, and then porto is is significantly further north, uh, also on the west side. So we're talking about the, the atlantic coast in between the two really okay, yeah, nice that's lovely.

Speaker 1: 12:26

I do like a season after living in singapore. So, um, yeah, you can wear, there is seasonality for sure.

Speaker 3: 12:32

And yeah, there is seasonality for sure. And yeah, there is seasonality for sure in most of Portugal, I mean, I would say even Algarve, maybe. With Algarve the stigma is there's the off season and then the tourist season, seasons of the weather.

Speaker 2: 12:51

Porto is such a beautiful little town. Oh no, it's not even little, it's a big city, but it's beautiful, right.

Speaker 3: 12:57

Yeah, it's phenomenal, I think, for most world travelers that do visit big cities. Porto is very small and we're talking about like a quarter million people, so it's not really that big. It's very walkable, especially the, let's say, the historic city center, across to even the Ritzy district called Foch. Foch do Douro, which is the Foch do Douro is like the mouth of the Douro River, which is a historically very affluent location. You know it probably only takes about 45 minutes to an hour depending on your walking pace, and it's a beautiful walk if you walk alongside the doro. So I mean, if you're talking about like a city being walkable in about an hour, you know it's.

Speaker 1: 13:42

It's pretty small yeah, we live in singapore, we live in singapore, you're talking about a small city. Well, it sounds smaller than Singapore. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 3: 13:53

No, it is for sure, it definitely is Granted. In Singapore you do have a lot of different pockets of different neighborhoods that you can be in. Obviously, porto has its different neighborhoods, but it's not the type of vibrant change that you have have when you go from chinatown to little india, to the central business district, you know you're still going through like very portuguese neighborhoods yeah, it's got that ancient feeling, you know the kind of all the beautiful tiles and the old buildings and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 14:32

So it is a walk sort of through history.

Speaker 3: 14:37

Absolutely, it has crazy charm.

Speaker 2: 14:39

It's got beautiful cobblestone streets, except for when you're walking the Camino, because after a while I hated those streets.

Speaker 3: 14:50

But it's beautiful. It is part of the camino, walk right uh, there is, yeah, I guess there's a portion, um, yeah, that you can cut through, yeah, but I mean, I think most people would take the more northern routes for the camino yeah, I don't know a ton of people who do the portugueseino. To be honest, yeah, it's more like the ones that cut through France and then, obviously, the top of Spain.

Speaker 2: 15:19

Because I mean when I did it there was hostels and hotels that nobody was in, because I went in the middle of summer and nobody walks the central part of Portugal in summer, apparently, but Paula. But anyway, moving right along, Is there a big expat community there?

Speaker 3: 15:41

In Porto or in Portugal?

Speaker 2: 15:43

Both, I guess.

Speaker 3: 15:45

Yeah. So I mean, when we're talking about expats, it's a little tricky because it's like are we talking about just foreigners? Are we talking about, like, a certain nationality? So in this regard, I'll keep it to maybe americans and brits, because we'll talk about english speakers. Yeah, um, yeah, so we tend to see that a lot of british people, especially the retirees will, will definitely live near the water, so they're living South in Algarve or they're living, you know, somewhere close to Lisbon, qashqai. There's a lot of historical connections, especially in Porto, with England. So you have that as well, that that dynamic, like families, that like generations that have been here. Yeah, you know it's. It's a part of the port wine trade as well. Like a lot of the port wine houses are actually british names, yeah, and, and then british are also like a very high demographic of of foreigners that live here, like just in the country at large, but also, uh, in porto.

Speaker 3: 16:51

Americans, on the other hand, which is which is our people, I mean everybody's our people. We tend to attract Americans on our YouTube channel. It's grown over the past few years. I mean, if you were to be here, let's say, even five years ago, it was a bit of an anomaly as an American to be here for sure. I mean, we were asked really early on when we arrived in late 2020, like, like American, this is like you're my first American that I've met, and these are like college students and stuff. So they're they're fascinated with the States because of pop culture and stuff like that. What I'll say about the actual community itself, I think to really answer your question is it's fragmented. So you do have a lot of Americans and Brits and English speakers that live here, but it's not like a really tight-knit community that sings Kumbaya. You've got that in other parts of Portugal, but that doesn't exist as much both in Lisbon and in Porto.

Speaker 2: 17:52

Okay, Is there a type of expat? Because I know every place I've moved to there's always a kind of like a type of expat, whether it's a banker or a pilot. Is there a type of expat there?

Speaker 3: 18:06

Yeah, that's a great question. I think the short answer is no. I think the short answer is no because I guess what's happened over the past five years has been you have two different types of visas now that people can get Main ones. There's more than just these two, but the two main ones are the D7 and the D8. And the D7 now is for people that have passive income, so it's typically retirees or people that are more established that maybe have rental properties or have a big portfolio with um with dividends that pay out. So you have, you know, the retiree crowd.

Speaker 3: 18:44

But then you also have, uh, working professionals that tend to be remote workers, not digital nomads, and the distinction I make here is digital nomads will stay for like a shorter period of time, usually like six months to a year in a place, three to three months to a year in a place, and then they move on and they go somewhere else, which can be cool. The D8 also has this remote worker component to it. Basically, if you have active income as your source of income, then you can apply for a residence permit that gives you more than a year. So it's not nomadic. You're fixing yourself in a place, you're becoming a tax resident, and those people tend to be between 35 and 55, moving with a remote job. So so no, and they're in all sorts of industries. Lisbon is attracting people in the tech sector. They've got some tax benefits there, uh, cause they're trying to grow their tech scene. But um no, in general I think Portugal is is attracting kind of all kinds of expats.

Speaker 2: 19:54

Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? Because?

Speaker 1: 19:59

I know a lot of yeah, sorry, go, sorry, you go, paula, no, no, go. Well, I, I noticed that on your, on your website, that you do like help for applying for these visas. You, you do like a workshop or something, is it?

Speaker 3: 20:16

yeah, yeah. So we have a couple of ways to help people out. I mean, you, you know, first and foremost, we're like, we're content creators. That's. That's really our bread and butter and what we enjoy doing Not that we don't enjoy doing the other things, but, um, we, you know, we're a content creation media company. But, uh, out of a response to our audience, people were asking for, like, additional help. So they kind of pulled us back into the consulting thing. So Kaylee really keeps her ear to the ground on what's happening. She has a couple of lawyers that she can call up to figure out. You know what's going on when the when news breaks about something changing, and she does one-on-one consultations with people.

Speaker 3: 20:58

And then, as a response to a bunch of our audience members reaching out to us in 2021, asking for a step-by-step guide, we created a step-by-step video guide on how to apply for either the D7 or the D8 visa, so someone can make that one-off purchase and then they've got the videos for as long as they need to use it. We say it takes about 90 days. It's obviously highly dependent on how quickly the, the government's, you know, processing the visas, but it's it's usually about 90 days to get everything done and get your visa back. Um, so it's step-by-step video guides. There is text in there that people need need to read. Uh, an additional text that people can read if they want, and checklists and all those things. Um, but we try to keep prices like as as low as we could so that the barrier to entries is low and, if possible, to save people that don't want to go the route of getting a lawyer, like an immigration lawyer, because that can get pricey yeah, to give them an option.

Speaker 2: 22:03

Essentially, yeah, that's good. It's a good option.

Speaker 1: 22:07

It's so helpful. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2: 22:10

Yeah, do you get by without speaking Portuguese? I know you touched on. If you can't speak Portuguese, speak English, but can you get by, is it or is it?

Speaker 3: 22:23

best to learn? Well, it's definitely best to learn, but can you get by? Yes, you can get by, certainly, in Porto, lisbon, places in Algarve, you could definitely get by. Your time here is going to be way richer if you know portuguese and you start to get portuguese friends, because they're just going to pull you into culture or at least help you understand certain cultural things that you're like what is this like? Why do you people do this thing? You know, um, so I think that's a massive benefit to knowing portuguese, but, no, for sure, like in in the two main cities, absolutely, you know, portugal's the seventh most let me, let me get this right has the seventh best, uh, english language fluency of any non-english speaking country wow, that's pretty high yeah, it's high, it's very high, yeah, so like great job.

Speaker 3: 23:20

Portuguese people like it's.

Speaker 1: 23:22

It's actually really impressive, it's really impressive do they make it hard to learn, right when? When somebody's english, it's easy to be lazy? Well, not that I think that, but I I think english speakers, oh, as a first language, tend to be quite lazy with their language skills right. So it's hard to push past that, because you also want to be polite and say, okay, we'll speak English.

Speaker 3: 23:51

Yeah, you're 100% right. I mean, that definitely happens, especially here. And I think people come here with this fancy like, this fancy idea of like oh, I'm going to move to Porto and I'm going to become fluent at Portuguese, and then they arrive and they realize like they literally could go out and do all their things, their daily things, without having to speak Portuguese. Funny enough, the things, the moments where you probably do need Portuguese are the moments that it's like you're going to use that you know list of vocabulary once or twice a year, like on your annual doctor's checkup or some bureaucratic appointment where it's like this box of vocabulary that you just do not need on a daily basis. Those are the times that, like English you know cause you're learning the language right.

Speaker 3: 24:41

Actively, yeah, I mean. So, kaylee and I we took a, a, an online language course that is certified, like by the government, to give us an A2 certificate. Now, like, why is A2 certificate important? First of all, let me back up. There's this thing called the European Framework of Languages and there are six levels of fluency. So you have A1, a2, b1, b2, c1, c2. And Portugal, for their citizenship, only requires A2. So it's quite low.

Speaker 2: 25:15

Ah, yeah, okay.

Speaker 3: 25:22

Plenty of other countries will require you to be in the Bs, which is like intermediate, but Portugal's A2. So we took a language course, gosh, about six months ago. We finished it and it certified us as A2 language learners. I think we're in the Bs now, but we're not certified in the B's. But we don't need to be.

Speaker 2: 25:42

Is it hard?

Speaker 3: 25:44

The course. Yeah, well, to be quite honest, the way the course is set up, it was like as long as you show up and you participate, then you're good, like the teacher can evaluate you along the way. Our class size was really small, so we had a ton of time in the sessions to practice. Um, it was every day. Uh, yeah, so it was. It was good, I think from well, from what I hear, the classes that are like twice a week tend to be better, because it gives you a little more time to absorb the information, whereas, like you know, we're learning new stuff every single day, every day, wow.

Speaker 3: 26:29

And yeah, and it got a bit hard to keep up with.

Speaker 2: 26:32

But you're living and breathing it because you're in the country, which makes it easier than trying to get to do the levels in another country before you arrive right.

Speaker 1: 26:40

Let me ask you this Are you and Kayleigh speaking to each other at home?

Speaker 3: 26:47

Yeah, good question. We still speak to each other at home, we just do it in English.

Speaker 2: 26:51

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 26:58

No, I think it would be like the blind leading the blind if we were speaking Portuguese with each other. So, funny enough, we have a daughter who is five years old and she started school here when she was two and her English has always been better than her Portuguese. But you know, she's getting a ton of Portuguese exposure at a native level and at times I shouldn't do this. I know I shouldn't do this, but at times I'll speak with her in Portuguese just kind of joking around, and we're pretty good about having little conversations in Portuguese. However, when mommy tries to jump in, then Valencia, our daughter, will be like mommy doesn't speak Portuguese, you know, then then valencia, our daughter will will be like mommy doesn't speak portuguese. You know, she'll make really funny remarks like that, so she'll tell people that. I'm sure that does wonders for kaylee's uh confidence.

Speaker 2: 27:57

Yeah, that's why I stopped getting a tutor in.

Speaker 1: 28:00

Italian.

Speaker 2: 28:00

It's a brutal. So do you have to own a car while you're there, or public transport's a better option, or how does it work?

Speaker 3: 28:11

Okay, awesome question. So you're full of great questions today. So I think one of the main things that we talk about and I think that we kind of like the vibe we give off on our channel is we're not car people Like we. We did not want being Americans that. You know, we're in a culture, come from a culture that's so dependent on cars because of geography and infrastructure. Um, we wanted to be in places where we didn't need a car and weren't reliant on it that responsibility and expense. So we talk about that a lot on the channel. So when we talk about a different city that one can live in, we actually talk about it from the lens of do you need a car here?

Speaker 3: 28:53

I find that car ownership here in portugal is quite high. A lot of people, regardless of economic level, they tend to have a car and I don't know how they afford it because they're not cheap to own here, not as expensive as in Singapore, but all relative like it's all relative. But no like in the big cities. No Like public transportation here is well done. A lot of the public transportation, let's say, bar lisbon, is quite new and modern. The buses, a lot of them, are going to electric and and those are good you don't have trams there, don't you really good tram system yeah, yeah, I mean.

Speaker 3: 29:35

so porto has a a pretty new metro system and we keep expanding it. We've got a lot of construction going on now for the infrastructure to expand these lines. So, no, I don't think in most parts of Portugal you need a car. If you're in, like some of the major cities and towns, no, getting between the cities, depending on where we're talking about you might need a car, might want a car.

Speaker 2: 30:02

Yeah, yeah. So if you have a car, like if you do end up having a car, do you need to get a license? I know you need to have a license to drive a car, but do you need to like? How does this? Do you know how the license works?

Speaker 3: 30:13

Because you know, sometimes you can hand your license in and you get theirs yeah, it's, you know, for most drop, for most international internationals coming in with their license, they they can do some sort of exchange. There's some some paperwork that has to be done, but yeah yeah, yeah, there's an exchange process is there a car sharing service?

Speaker 1: 30:38

so if you did want to go to like a little town outside and just take the day, and or, you know, if you had to pick up something from ikea, I don't know, uh, you can do like a car share service, is that? Have they got that there?

Speaker 3: 30:53

you know, I've seen it in other parts of europe. I have not seen it really here, but also I'm not looking for it, so I don't know if I don't know if I'm accurate in saying it's not here, but I have not noticed it. Um, what I will say is that, especially if it's the off season, renting a car in Portugal can be very affordable, very affordable. Uh, if it's, if it's the like's, the peak travel season, tourist season, it's pricey. The prices are pretty fluid, yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:29

Like the rest of Europe, interesting, yeah, exactly. What about buying property? Is it easy to do? Yeah, can you?

Speaker 3: 31:44

You can. You shouldn't have some countries you can't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's start there. Good question, let's start there. So, yes, you can. The other interesting thing is is you can also get a mortgage as a foreigner, which I think, yeah, which I think surprises a lot of people and you can even get a mortgage even if you're not living here.

Speaker 2: 31:59

So oh, wow.

Speaker 3: 32:01

Yeah, yeah. So I don't know if that's going to be something that they look at and they change down the road.

Speaker 2: 32:07

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 32:07

But yeah, because prices here they're on the rise, Are they? They've been on the rise, but that's like the rest of Europe, but it's been steeper than some other parts of Europe as well. So, yeah, the process to buy a house is pretty easy Kaylee and I have done it or buy a property. So one of the main things that people need to realize is a lawyer in this regard is very important. So having a good lawyer, they'll help protect you.

Speaker 3: 32:36

The other two things, or the two other things, would be consider getting a buyer's agent versus just approaching a real estate agent about a property that you're interested in, because the agent that's listing the property is working for the seller and they're not trying to protect you at all. They're trying to get the best deal for their client and their commissions will be the same kind of regardless. If you're working with a buyer's agent, it's possible that the buyer's agent negotiates to not split commissions, which will make the life of the seller's agent easier, because they'll just take all the commission from the seller and then you pay directly to the seller's agent. Easier, because they'll just take all the commission from the seller and then you pay directly to the buyer's agent, so you might pay a little more, but you're going to kind of be protected better on what you're buying. The key thing here, though, to note is that agents don't have to be licensed, which blows my mind like coming from the States. Wow, but it's the actual agencies that are licensed.

Speaker 3: 33:41

My mind like coming from the states wow, but it's the actual agencies that are licensed, so okay so that person that you're hiring may not be like good, good, well, well, well educated, well trained on the actual process. They could have just started the job and you could be their first lead. So the thing to consider is buying cash or with a mortgage. The mortgage process will be longer. It'll be a little more tedious. There'll be more documents that you have to bring to the table. However, essentially, the bank is buying that property on your behalf, so they're doing a lot of the checks that wouldn't end up getting checked when you buy it with cash. So there have been people that we know that have bought with cash and then they get stuck with something that they didn't realize they were buying, whereas a bank will catch that and be like this is what you're buying, is this what you want to buy? Here are the issues that we see. Or this doesn't even have a clean title, like we can't buy this right now.

Speaker 1: 34:47

So yeah, yeah, oh sorry, sorry, you go, yeah, sorry.

Speaker 3: 34:53

No, so. So just to reiterate it. So the three things would be get yourself a good real estate lawyer, you know, attorney, whatever and then very highly consider getting a buyer's agent. And then the third is like wait, weigh your options between buying cash which can make it cheaper or getting a mortgage which can have the banks do most of the due diligence for you.

Speaker 2: 35:19

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 35:20

Sorry, rachel go ahead. No, no, Rachel go ahead.

Speaker 1: 35:21

No, no, no, that's fine. Sorry, I love talking over the top of people.

Speaker 3: 35:27

You're good at it.

Speaker 1: 35:28

Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. I've achieved my goals today. Is there no independent person that can go through? You know, titles and things like that like, rather than just the bank.

Speaker 3: 35:49

Yeah, there are and there's also there's the possibility to get an inspection done. But when I say like a home inspection, I don't want, at least like Americans, listening out there, because I don't know how other countries do it. You know how either. New Zealand, australia, uk, canada I know a little bit about Canada, I know a little bit about. So Canada and the US are pretty similar when it comes to how we do home inspections. Home inspections in our countries are very robust. In Portugal not so much. It's very surfacy, so it doesn't mean they're going to catch the things that are probably really important to you. They may not even go and visit certain elements of the actual building that need to be documented in the report.

Speaker 1: 36:35

So like building link uh leaks and things like that.

Speaker 3: 36:38

You know structural problems, that sort of thing going into a crawl space going up on the roof?

Speaker 1: 36:44

yeah, exactly yeah, um, I have a left field question and we can edit this out, but do you know much about the um golden visa? Was that part of d7 or d8 or is that?

Speaker 3: 37:00

separate. Yeah, it's separate, so it's another type of visa. Um, yes, so in fact, after we finish this recording, I'm actually interviewing a, a guy that is going to talk about the portuguese golden visa. Okay, so the Portuguese golden visa has changed over the past several years. It was introduced I think this one was also in 2012.

Speaker 3: 37:23

And at the time, there were several different ways you could get the visa. One of the main ways, which actually was about 90% of the golden visa applications, was for real estate investment, was for buying property, like but they got rid of that, so they got rid of that element. The government did it in a reaction to the rising housing prices, which, in my opinion, didn't affect anything because it was less than 1% of total acquisitions during the whole time period the golden visa existed. Compared against that same time period for housing transactions, it was like 0.25% of total purchases for golden visa stuff. So they got rid of that element.

Speaker 3: 38:08

However, there are a couple of companies that sell golden visas and I'll put like sell golden visas in air quotes that help you process your golden visa, that have real estate is and you're buying a fraction, but that fraction's represented actually by a house or by an apartment, a condo, whatever. There are also some that the number for most golden visas is half a million for some golden visa types, so the investment's half a million. However, some of the products in the market will pay your return upfront, so you don't actually have to come to the table with half a million in cash. You can come to the table with. I think the lowest one that we know of is is 320 000, which I think for a lot of your listeners that's in the realm of possibility, like I think most americans that retire will have that amount, uh, that they could, that they have investments or that they would have liquid.

Speaker 1: 39:30

So yeah, does that, does that answer your question, I hope. Yeah, yes, and how long is? It for Is it five years or something?

Speaker 3: 39:41

Let me see how to answer this. So the way the Golden Visa is structured and how it's different to, let's say, the D7 or the D8 Visa. So the D7 and D8 Visa get you residence permits. The Golden Visa there's not a longer residency that you have to take up in the country, so you don't actually end up having to become a tax resident. You can, whereas D7 and D8, you have to become a tax resident, you have to be here at least half of the year to keep your status going, whereas with the Golden Visa it's like a week to two weeks in country or during your period of time, which is two to three years.

Speaker 3: 40:31

So that'll be for five years that you'll need to keep in the golden visa. It'll be for five years that you need to kind of keep your, your visits going, you know, once a year, every other year, and then at the end of five years you've essentially been in Portugal long enough where you can get the passport, you can apply for citizenship. I mean, that's a highly contentious element to the golden visa among Portuguese and among Europeans, like there are some Europeans that are not happy about this. On the other side, with the D7 and D8, if you're in Portugal for five years. And again both you have to pass the language requirement. So you need that A2 certificate. Then you can apply for the citizenship and then with the citizenship is the passport European Portuguese passport.

Speaker 2: 41:30

That's very interesting. It is very interesting.

Speaker 3: 41:32

I hope I explained that well and if I didn't, I'll get you a video link so that you can share that with your audience that's more interested in the Golden Beezes.

Speaker 1: 41:44

Perfect, oh yeah.

Speaker 3: 41:44

Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 41:46

That's a good overview, definitely, and what about the healthcare system?

Speaker 3: 41:50

Sorry, I'm just going straight into it. No, it's a good question. So the healthcare system here is, over the whole, good. However, the best facilities are, by and large, in the bigger cities. So people that have this idea of moving to a small Portuguese town that's very you know like very remote, the health care is most likely going to be really poor there.

Speaker 2: 42:19

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 42:21

Whereas if you're going to Lisbon or Porto, you're going to have much better health care. You know Portugal has top level like cancer research and they know how to handle those types of situations. But again, it's in the areas where where the funding is, which tends to be lisbon and porto, and then if you go to one of the, this beautiful small towns, you might be struggling. You might end up having to then go to a lisbon or porto to get proper care.

Speaker 2: 42:53

To get the service you need.

Speaker 3: 42:55

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 42:57

What about the Silver Coast? Or is it quite easy to get to either Porto or Lisbon from there?

Speaker 3: 43:05

Again, it depends on what you need done, right? I mean, I think most places are equipped to handle basic things. If you get sick, you know you can go and be seen and get taken care of. The cost is very low. If you're in the public system, then that's kind of taken care of by the fact that you're a legal resident, Like it's practically free, if not free. You can top up with private, which I think most foreigners do, and then private gives you access to private hospitals which means that you can be seen faster. It doesn't mean that the care is going to be better, because there are certain instances where the private isn't equipped in terms of like what they have in the facilities to take care of whatever need you have, and then they just send you on to the public. So yeah.

Speaker 2: 44:04

That's interesting. Yeah, it is. Do you sorry, go.

Speaker 1: 44:11

What is that you ask? You ask.

Speaker 2: 44:14

It's all right. If someone was thinking about moving to Portugal, what were the key advice that you would have, or you would give them, to make the transition smoother?

Speaker 3: 44:26

Okay. So one of the main things I think people should recognize about Portugal is if, if this is your first move abroad and you're not used to bureaucracy when it comes to immigration and immigrating to a new place, then you have to understand that you're going to be confronted with quite a bit of bureaucracy, especially on the front end, and for a lot of people it it can drive them crazy, it can make them question why they've even made the move, and it doesn't end when you arrive in country. The culture here is much more laid back. There's a focus on work-life balance that I think attracts a lot of people, but those same people might not have enough kind of perspective to be like.

Speaker 3: 45:16

This is what I signed up for and this permeates literally every like facet of life this kind of slow, more laid back, relaxed approach to everything. Yeah. So I think being aware of that and, just like you know, doing your kumbayas in those moments of stress where you can't get something done, is really important. So my advice would be you know, as you're going through the process of moving here or when you first arrive, if you can accomplish one task a day, you're doing a good job. Don't overwhelm yourself trying to get more done, because it probably won't happen, not because of lack of will, but just because the culture doesn't allow for it.

Speaker 2: 46:01

That's good advice, definitely good advice. Is there anything else you think you'd like to add?

Speaker 3: 46:12

I think we've covered a ton. Like you all, you all really did your homework putting together these questions, asking the important things that that we like to cover as well on the channel from you know healthcare, language, car necessity, expat communities, all of that, um, I mean, portugal is very diverse, so I think that it's like less snow based stuff, but climate you've you've got a good variety here. Nowhere is that cold. Just be careful when you're selecting your apartment, because sometimes the insulation is bad and it can be colder inside, which which, at times, is a it's a problem in singapore, right, it's like you're freezing inside somewhere and it's nice and pleasant outside yeah, I don't know about nice and pleasant, but yeah, all right fair enough it's awesome.

Speaker 2: 47:32

I mean I'm so happy to have you on. We'll link all the show notes for anyone who wants to get in touch with you or see your YouTube channel and honestly, thank you so much for coming on, because it's been we've been wanting to have you on for ages.

Speaker 3: 47:48

Yeah, I'm so glad that we were able to make this happen and get to chat with you all. Maybe at some point we'll chat a little more about Singapore and what all that looked like, but we're super happy to let any body in your audience know about Portugal and helping to move here or in other places in Europe that we're creating content about.

Speaker 1: 48:08

Perfect, that's awesome. Yeah, that's good to know, fantastic.

Speaker 2: 48:12

Thank you Josh. Thank you Josh, thank you Josh, I really appreciate it Paula Rachel, thank you. Yeah, take care.

Speaker 1: 48:18

Bye, hope you get better soon. Bye-bye.

Speaker 3: 48:21

Thanks, bye.