Hello Everyone, My husband and I planning a move to Portugal later this year, but we are having a difficult time finding a good resource that addresses rental property and have the following questions that I hope you can help with:
Need a house rental site to look up listings
Do we need to involve a professional person (real estate agent) in the rental process?
What are the steps and associated costs to initiate renting of a place?
How long does it take to process a rental contract
How long does it take to get utilities established
We have two dogs (lab + medium sized mutt) - is this going to make renting more difficult/impossible?
We will be visiting Portugal in May and would like to meet with a real estate agent if they do indeed help with rental properties. Is this realistic?
At this point we are interested in cities/towns that are near Lisbon which are serviced by trains/metro into the city center.
But we are certainly open to suggestions and are not confined by this criteria.(for instance we like the town of Tomar,which is farther away)
We appreciate your time and consideration
Rental Questions for Portugal
Hello Leamho.
Welcome to Expat.com! 
Hope you'll get the answers to your questions soon.
Thank you,
Aurélie
Are you coming on a visa? Are you an EU citizen? How long are you expecting to be here? these are just a few of the questions that come to mind. To rent for more than 6 months, you have to have the right to live here for more than 6 months when you sign a contract. Otherwise, you can only rent for short periods of time. Legally, that is.
By the way, here is a real estate site for you to get an idea of pricing for long term rentals and purchases. Here is a site for holiday, and thus short term, rentals. For the holiday rentals, listings are generally per week and you have to ask them for longer term rental pricing. Sometimes they say sure and give you a good quote but sometimes they just multiply the weekly rental by 4.
thank you we are in the process of applying for residency in Portugal. We are US citizens and will be visiting in May to determine which areas we like. I will look into your rental site and appreciate your response.
Hello,
in the past, real estate agents where not active on the rental area, tipically all was taken care by the owners and the wannabe tenants.
Due to new regulation ( one need to have a certificate of termal behaviour of the house that must be presented on new renting contracts ), but also due to the financial clima, real estate agent also deal with rentals, and assist with contract etc.
Aside from tomar, you might easily conect with state agents working on the city of your selection.
Some players on this field [ all are franchized], but for sure has lots of offerts on each portfolio.
http://www.era.pt/http://www.remax.pt/http://www.century21.pt
Usually to initiate a renting contract, 2 months are required. Due to your situation, further waranty might be asked.
If the contract is formal and done legally, owner must declare the contract to the local finance [ thus also ensuring the place is suitable for living ] , and process takes only few days to conclude.
Electricity, water, gas, net cable are done for sure under 1 month, but depends on the municipality.
As diverdutch says, take special care of the residency process.
cheers
paulo
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