Day 77 (Wednesday, December 14, 2021)
Costs for the Day are in the Table below:
Woke up late after sleeping poorly. The sublet drama continues since the deposit refund is still “pending” in PayPal. PayPal indicates it can take up to 10 days.
Bi found an interesting unit for sale in Luz listed for $229k EUR so we scheduled a showing to take a look:
There are 12 condominium units and also a Hotel onsite with 28 rooms/units. The Hotel owns the pool and that portion of the yard and the top parking lot as well as the entire second building off to the right hand side that is only one level which you can see in the last photo. The Hotel also owns the first level of the condo building.
We were able to flag down the Hotel manager, Sandro, who gave us the scoop on the building, history, and nearby properties. The site operates based on a share model and the Hotel has a 29% voting share in the condo building since the Hotel owns the first floor. So, the condo owners essentially are able to control what happens to that building since they have 71% share. All of the common areas for the Hotel and Condo building were previously managed by the Hotel but that is changing now and the Condo building will be managed going forwards by a separate management company. The pipes from the street to the units were just replaced but inside the units some owners updated piping and electricity and others did not. The Hotel Manager indicated that he believed the unit we viewed was updated but that we could check by looking at the fuse box and the pipe coming from the water meter. He indicated that HOA fees had been about 700 EUR per year but were now going up to 1,200 EUR per year with the change in structure to use the outside management company. Three of the 12 condo units were currently on the market for sale and he said that was likely because one of the units that was beautifully updated had sold for 285k EUR recently and owners were hoping to sell for a similar price. However, he said updates in the other units were not comparable and a more reasonable price for the unit we saw was 200k EUR even though it was listed for 230k EUR currently (decreased from 275k EUR previously). He said the owners of the unit we saw (Unit #4) were Swedish and had paid about 140k EUR for the unit but had made updates.
Sandro, the Hotel Manager, also said the property to the left was being developed and would likely block a portion of the view on the left side. However, the front of the property was unlikely to have any development high enough to block that area.
For Lunch, we stopped at a Cafe called Flor da Amendoeira in Lagos. The best thing about my hamburger was probably the baguette but the rest was exceptionally mediocre. I could tell by the look on Bi’s face that rice with duck wasn’t much better. (Cost: 12.20 EUR)
In the evening, we went to dinner at Amanda and Claudio’s house in Carvoeiro. The town is popular with expats and has some nice restaurants and bars. It is also close to Benagil Caves which are a major tourist destination. Amanda and Claudio are renovating the place so it is a bit under construction. Amanda cooked a delicious soup for dinner with baguettes and finishing with a Birthday cake for Bi! It says 39 but Bi is actually turning 40, even though she obviously looks much, much younger. It was a lot of fun hanging out with Amanda and Claudio and chatting over dinner.
