Shipping furniture from California

@Edwinholder Where on the Silver Coast are you going to be living?  My wife and I have purchased an apartment in Caldas da Rainha on the Silver Coast.  We will actually be moving nextd March after we have sold our home in Tampa. 

We have not picked out place yet but in will be in Caldas or surrounding area. We have children so are interested in the schools in the area both private and public. Will be going in March and hopefully visiting schools. We are from Houston and cannot wait to get out of Texas.

@KYRIL D. From Hans Faulstich: Dear Kyril D. it’s already a while ago that you made these comments but anyway it’s interesting for me because we are preparing our move from Florida to Portugal, Ericeira/Mafra area. Month of March we spend our time researching the area from Nazare till Ericeira/Mafra. I got already my NIF and opened a Bank-Account.

When we move, first we will rent an Apartment for several month before we buy an Apartment.

I am really interested in your experience because that’s exactly what we will do. We will move without big furniture. We will take something from the kitchen/personal service (Porzellan). From the office, our laptops with 4 bigger monitors (work for 220V/50Hz) and a desk. Also, clothes, shoes etc.. I don’t take my car. I would appreciate it if you could share with me more of your experience.

Kind regards, Hans

@Edwinholder

what was the route? Truck,  train, ship? how long did it take? how much was quote accurate? would you recommend the company you used? what would you do different? We want 20 foot container  we are in Wisconsin  how much was it? our end point is Madeira so an extra blip in the plan  to canical port 

@Edwinholder oh little iver $7,000 to ehere? lisbon or? where from in canada? thank you  7,000 is better than 27,000+ i was quited 😡

@nz7521137

how much was it? 20 foot container? where to where? how long was route? any issues?

@Hans43

Hello and welcome on board !

I would suggest that you open a new thread on the Portugal forum for each question you have so that members can properly guide you.

In regards to professionals you are looking for, feel free to have a look at our partners registered in the Services section : https://www.expat.com/en/services/europe/portugal/

All the best

Bhavna

@mikecaseyreno dang thats a nightmare 

Also the thing that most worries me is furniture to scale.  I have always had fairly large homes, now I am going to an apartment and concerned about the scale of my furniture versus buying in Portugal to scale.
   

That is definitely an issue. We always moved with a 20 ft container and we took what we liked and fit into the container. If you already know your new home in Portugal then you can just analyze the floor plan and only take stuff that will fit.

@elizabethkunstler  Elizabeth, did you move from the USA? 

hello all...just came across this thread and thought I'd add our experience, having moved about three years ago from the US. 

When we moved to Lisbon, we ended up buying most of our furniture and electronics when we arrived.  We also decided to ship most of our more important personal items. This included a few pieces of furniture, art, and items which had more experiential memories tied to them.  The stuff we shipped took up about half a 20 foot container.

FYI....while this is aged a bit, I'm not sure how much prices would have increased (if at all). When we shipped out stuff, this was the latter part of covid and international shipping had sky-rocketed.  Below were our quotes we received:

20' Container - ~$10,000 total (included destination fees, port fees, full replacement liability insurance)

40' Container - ~$12,000 total (included destination fee, port fees, full replacement liability insurance)

The above quotes were "full service" from pick-up to drop-off, furniture disassembly/re-assembly, packing, boxes and supplies, the move, unpacking, material removal, and all international moving logistics.

We initially were going to book the 40' container as we originally intended to ship our car.  The price above for the 40' contain included the cost of shipping the automobile (to go into the container).

The shipping company was a US-based company that handled all the logistics, including working with a Lisbon-based company to coordinate and handle all import documentation.  The PT company advised us about a potential import tax for our car and was very open about the determination of the tax not being known until it was cleared by the PT import authorities at the time is was imported. They said the decision was 100% up to the person interpreting the date we "acquired" the car. 

NOTE: Our car issue was that since we owned the car for about three years, we had a car loan which was paid off about three months before we moved. The state we moved from issued us the clean title to the car once the loan was repaid early but the date of the title was only three months before we arrived.  While we had a bill of sale and purchase agreement from three years prior, the risk was that the import authority may focus on the date on the title and not the date of the purchase.  Out PT importer told us our issue was not uncommon in their experience and said there was no consistency on that tax decision.  We REALLY appreciated the importer's attention to detail and honestly and made the decision NOT to risk that added cost (the tax exposure was estimated at over 35K EURO) so we pivoted to the 20' container.