On the Hunt for a New Apartment in Lisbon…

No crypto today. No gold. No Swiss francs. No musings about the decline of the US dollar.

Instead…

We’re looking for an apartment to rent in Lisbon.

My wife Yulia and I allowed the lease to lapse on our previous apartment in Cascais, an upscale beach town 45 minutes west of the Portuguese capital. The locals call Cascais the Portuguese Riviera. I get that. It draws in a lot of Portuguese wealth because it’s so picturesque.

Just not where we lived…

Bad timing and the need to find a place quickly last summer led us to rent a fantabulous apartment… in a terrible neighborhood.

It had all the ambiance of a bare, 25-watt lightbulb dangling from a frayed cord.

So, we canceled the lease and ventured to Thailand for the summer, figuring we’d deal with finding a new place to call home when we returned.

Which, now that we’ve returned, is the process (read: chore!) that we’re now engaged with.

The low cost of living is what attracted a bazillion foreigners to Lisbon over the last seven or eight years. Honestly, it was one of the calling cards that drew me to this sliver of the Iberian peninsula. That, and the fact that I could qualify for a tax scheme that means I pay 0% in Portuguese taxes, meaning my global tax rate is in the 10% to 12% range.

Portugal is still a big draw… The food, the culture, the weather, the cost of living… it’s all pretty appealing, especially compared to what most Americans are accustomed to. Particularly up in Porto (the second largest city) and down along the Algarve, the southern coast that feels like a misplaced piece of Southern California.

Housing in Lisbon, however, is no longer an oasis of bargains…

Frankly, Prague, the Czech capital where Yulia and I used to live, spoiled me.

For the equivalent of $2,000, Yulia and I had a sweet pied-a-terre on the top floor of a five-story building built in the 1800s, sitting in the center of one the best and leafiest neighborhoods in Prague. The tram was just outside our door; the metro, a 10-minute stroll.

Anything we wanted was at hand or so close we could walk.

We had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an office area spread across two floors. A small but brand-new kitchen. And a vast main room with a soaring ceiling of glass.

Here in Lisbon, the hunt has been frustrating…

Today, however, we got lucky. Maybe.

We found a two-bedroom, three-bath apartment on the third floor of a 1950s-era building overlooking a circular mercado (think: daily farmers’ market). It’s bright and airy and quiet. The apartment also has two small, interior rooms of 55 and 75 square feet, respectively, that would only work as a storage space and an office. But we need both, so that’s a plus for me.

The kitchen is the size of a continent relative to European standards. And the landlady says she’d be willing to spring a second and third air conditioner in the bedrooms, as well as a new dishwasher and refrigerator.

The neighborhood is lovely—the kind of Lisbon neighborhood I’ve wanted to live in. Lots of cafes and pastry shops and restaurants, little places to duck into for an espresso, a pastel de nata pastry, and a bit of writing in the morning.

The farmers’ market is literally across the street, and within walking distance is a huge park, retail shopping, and several grocery stores.

Plus, there’s easy parking 30 seconds away for our car, and two subway lines within a one- or two-minute walk that can get us to anywhere we want to go in Lisbon.

We still have two more apartments to view this week. But for my money—and I’ve already told Yulia this—the other two are going to have to come with a robotic maid, like Rosie from The Jetsons, or something even better.

Otherwise, we’ll soon be living across from a farmers’ market… where I’ve already scouted the little pastelaria where I’ll be buying my morning coffee and pastel de nata, and writing these dispatches.

More to come as this Lisbon apartment hunt plays out…