We Bought Land in Portugal: Part 1

Maybe it was all the episodes of Grand Designs we watched, but somewhere along the way our dream shifted from simply wanting to move to Portugal to wanting to move and build our dream home there.

For anyone not familiar with the show Grand Designs, definitely check it out. In short, it hinges around the idea of an individual or family deciding to build their dream home and follows them throughout the process. They meet with the host, Kevin McCloud, at the beginning of each episode bright-eyed and full of optimism, certain their house will be finished on budget for £200,000 in six months. They then meet with Kevin again, sometimes 5+ years later (we're joking, but not entirely!) after quickly burning through their budget and then some. But they always meet one last time in a finished house unlike any other.

Describing it this way, I’m not sure why this show inspired us. But the truth is, it’s the journey that excited us. It’s building something completely new, and completely your own that reflects your values. For us, that meant building something sustainable (more on that in a future post).

But to start, you need a place to build. And that brings us to today’s actual post topic: buying land. We started this process back in the fall of 2023 before we had a visa or anything. We knew that if we bought land in Portugal, that would be our eventual home and we would figure the rest out from there. In Part 2, we'll take you through the search itself - what we found, what surprised us, and how we made our decision.

Read Part 2: From a spreadsheet of 40 to one plot overlooking the Atlantic

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