Moving

SF Household Is Transferring to Portugal With out Even Visiting First

  • The buying frenzy fueled by the pandemic forced many Americans to buy real estate unseen.
  • A family from San Francisco even bought real estate in a country they had never visited.
  • It took a year of intense coordination but they are moving to Portugal in June. Here’s how they did it.
  • You can find more articles on Insider’s business page.

LaDonna Witmer will visit Portugal for the first time in June. She has no return date.

Like so many other Bay Area residents, Witmer and her husband were motivated to rethink where to raise their families when the pandemic broke out last year. Over the summer, the couple had an open conversation that was guided by a question many Americans have asked themselves over the past year: “What if we just don’t go back to any kind of normalcy?”

San Francisco is expensive, they argued, and they’ve spun Silicon Valley’s hamster wheel for decades. Could they find a place to stay that would keep their salaries going? Where could you cut your working hours to spend more time with your 10 year old daughter?

They always wanted to live abroad, they said. Now may be the time to make the dream a reality.

In a few months, the family – with their boxer-terrier mix Vila and the South American parrot FeeBea in tow – plans to move around 5,680 miles from San Francisco to the coastal city of Setúbal in Portugal. The city, 30 miles south of Lisbon, is known for its sardines and muscatels.

You will be staying in a light pink four bedroom house on a quaint cobblestone street in Setúbal, just blocks from the water that you bought unseen for 230,000 euros ($ 277,600).

Portugal Ladonna Witmer

The house in Portugal LaDonna Witmer and her family bought for about $ 280,000 – entirely online.


Courtesy LaDonna Witmer

With the purchase, Witmer joins the growing ranks of Americans who bought real estate before they ever set foot in the house. A recent Redfin report found that over half of U.S. homebuyers in the past year – a whopping 63% – made deals on real estate without ever keeping an eye on them. In comparison, only a third of buyers made unseen offers in 2019.

Witmer buys differently, of course, because it’s abroad.

Setúbal’s relative affordability made it easier to take the plunge. Zillow calculates the median house value in San Francisco at $ 1.4 million. That is more than five times what Witmer paid for the Portuguese hiding place. The stark contrast in real estate markets was a driving force behind their decision to move abroad. They still have a house in San Francisco that they want to bring on the market. You can expect a quick and fruitful sale: sell houses within a week and above the asking price.

Still, the pandemic buying process abroad has hiccups. It was easy to choose Portugal as your expatriate base, but finding a house while locked up on the other side of the world wasn’t like finding a home.

Witmer searched through Portuguese listing sites throughout October and November. She created elaborate spreadsheets with possible options. She spent hours playing around with Google Earth, understanding the placement of each property, learning about the neighborhoods, and introducing herself in the local bar and grocery store. After all, she’s never been in the area.

Witmer sought advice from a friend of a real estate agent, who put her in touch with a Keller Williams agent outside Lisbon. They developed a relationship and kept emailing, WhatsApping and zooming while the agent was visiting properties on behalf of Witmer.

In December 2020, Witmer’s family settled in a house after months of aggressive property checkouts. They made an initial offer just before Christmas, which was accepted in January.

setubal portugal beacn

A view of the beach in Setúbal, Portugal, where the family will finally move in June.


Cavan Images / Getty Images

The next challenge was the paperwork. Securing visas amid a global pandemic as countries actively tried to keep American visitors out was not an easy task. Witmer described “tires to jump through” including attempting (and failing) to open a Portuguese bank account and posting pages on notarized documents pages, including background checks, in the mail overnight, only to delay broadcasts due to massive weather events such as the snow storms in Texas.

Witmer’s family closed the house in mid-February. There was a charter they participated in at 3 a.m. through Zoom. It was laborious: the seller appeared on the screen with “all these official people in suits” as the certificate was read out. At one point Witmer muted her microphone, leaned over to her 20-year-old husband and said, “I have a feeling we’re getting married.”

But despite the stress of tedious bureaucracy, the pomp of morning document readings, and the fear of going somewhere she’s never been, Witmer is hopeful about the move. It helps that her father, an Illinois native nearing 80, confirmed her decision.

“If you don’t go,” she said, he said to her, “you would sit in San Francisco for the rest of your life wondering what would have happened.”

She’ll know this summer.

“I’m just looking forward to exploring roads that Google Earth wouldn’t drown,” she said.

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