The House Protects the Dreamer – Inadvertently buying 10 Properties in Portugal (part 3)

To recap, it had been a summer of surprises. The little villa I thought I was buying in Portugal turned out to be a bundle of 10 different properties, with each building and garden having its own separate tax record.

From a drone’s eye view, this collection of wee properties has the shape of a boot turned to the right, its pointy toe pointing slightly downwards.

Like a jigsaw puzzle, the villa, an old mill house, a storage shed, the outdoor kitchen and the surrounding gardens – 9 properties in all – fit together to form the upper part of the boot. The green heel, the yellow toe and the orange stirrup parts of the stocking- shaped property were owned by other people.

The next surprise came in early August.

“Hello Kristine,” my Portuguese realtor greeted me calmly in yet another WhatsApp call. “Now there is a new problem.”

Of course there is, I thought.

“One of the pieces of land was listed as 18 square meters, but is in fact 463 square meters. We have to have the property and tax records for this fixed.”

“Okay…” I said, not sure what else I could say.

“And then, of course,” he continued matter of factly, “the neighbors will all have to agree to the new dimensions.”

In my head, I imagined a disparate group of people not yet known to me, most likely old farmers, walking around the edges of the property, pacing it off on foot or with measuring devices, laughing and throwing numbers out in the air to each other before dispersing for dinner or perhaps a cold beer at the bar next to the chapel.

“In the meantime,” my realtor asked, “would you like to buy the other nine pieces of your property?”

On the drone view, the land in question was the purple bit that looked like it could be as much as one third of my little bundle of properties, the sum total of which added up to about two thirds of an acre. The purple bit had the parking area, gardens, the spring and the water pump – none of which I wanted to risk losing.

“No,” I told him. “Let’s get the whole package correct and do just one closing, ”

My offer had been accepted in May and it was now August, also known as Portugal’s “Silly Season” – four weeks during which everyone Portuguese goes to the beaches and nothing much gets done. Not the best time to get anything accomplished in Portugal, let alone try and buy a new home.

The real estate agent told me he still needed to find the heirs to a piece of land adjacent to the land I was trying to purchase – the one that was once owned by the woman who died fifty years ago after giving it to a man who eventually also died. Whoever now owned the little yellow tip of land now had to sign off on me buying the land next to it.

“How long will that take?” I asked him.

“We don’t know,” he said. I could almost hear him shrugging his shoulders.

“Maybe we will close in September.”

In September, I received an email from the Portuguese estate agent on a Sunday morning. Given it was the weekend, I was surprised to hear from him. But he had good news: he had tracked down the last two neighbors who need to sign off on my purchase of the property and everyone had agreed to the new dimensions of the purple gardens – two days before our closing date.

After four long months filled with uncertainties, on the very last day of a long summer, the sweet little villa and the jester’s stocking of gardens and barns finally became mine, to have and to hold, to live and dream in.

What are four walls, anyway? They are what they contain.

The house protects the dreamer.

Unthinkably good things can happen, even late in the game.

It’s such a surprise.

Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun

Original artwork by Kristin Fellows