 Welcome to a new project come video! So in this video, I'm going to show you how to buy a piece of land. Now we recently bought this big piece of land ourselves, it's 10 hectares and it's in Portugal, and we learned a lot by doing so. So if you want to buy a piece of land yourself, make sure to watch this video and I'll explain how it all went. So in order to make it a bit easy to understand, we divided this video into four chapters. Chapter one is all about research, trying to understand what it is that you're really looking for, what kind of land you like. In the second chapter, we're really going to go and visit lands. So trying to understand what's the best way to visit the land, where you should look out for, what are the things to pay attention to when you're walking around on these lands. And in the third chapter, we're actually going to buy the land, so going through the whole process, and also seeing how do you decide the price, what kind of legal paperwork do you need, how many taxes do you still have to pay, stuff like this. And in the fourth chapter, I'm actually going to show you the land we just bought. So in general, I would say it's quite of a lengthy process to buy a piece of land. It took us over two years from just having an idea to actually having the land. So yeah, let's get started. Alright, so the first chapter, research. Trying to figure out what kind of land you want. And it's good if you already know what you really want to do here, what's your purpose. So for us, we made this video, which you could see in the previous chapter in the Academy, where we share roughly the plan or the idea. It's more like a rough sketch of what we want to do. And this was actually very useful for us in the team and all our friends and family to understand what we want to do. But also if people wanted to donate money or anything like that, you could show them this video and then they have a bit of an understanding where you want to go. Could be a video, could be a PDF, but it helps to sort of crystallize a little bit the thoughts you have in your mind into sort of something concrete. However, if you're looking for a land, you need to have more than that. It needs to be more than just an idea. You really need to have some specific requirements and some specific information of what you're looking for. So for instance, location. Where do you want to go with your project? What language do they speak there and can you easily integrate? What's the size of the land that you actually need? Do you need a lot or is it just going to be a small community because this easily adds up in the price? What's the climate around there? Does it have very harsh winters and summer or is it a bit more mild? What kind of soil is there on the land? Do you want to grow vegetables and it needs to be very fertile or you don't mind or you want to regenerate the land that is currently dead? Do you need electricity on the land or are you going to stay off-grid? Same for water, do you need water to come from the grid or you have another natural source like a spring or you're going to use rainwater? Does the land have trees? Because if it doesn't it's going to take you a few years before you actually have them. Is the land easy to access with a big truck if you have supplies or anything coming in? And is in general the plot easy to access from the outside world? Like is there a bus station or train station or an airport close by that people can come and visit you in the middle of nowhere? And these are a lot of questions and to be honest I would say in the beginning we didn't really have an answer for this. Our answer was always we're flexible. We thought that was actually easy because we're open for anything but this is actually very hard because the moment you're going to sit down and you want to look for a piece of land I mean what are you going to type in your search part? Looking for a cool land? No, the more concrete information you have the easier it is to find something. So we really had to just narrow it down. So for instance the first big thing we narrowed down on was location. So we were looking for this big piece of land where we had some freedom to experiment and I'm from the Netherlands and also our organization is based in the Netherlands so in a way it would make sense to be there. However it's also really hard to find a big piece of land in the Netherlands because there's a lot of people living on a small space and this also actually results into a lot of rules and regulations so we didn't really have enough space there to experiment. So generally speaking the more we go south or east in Europe the more you find bigger plots of land and you have a bit of this freedom. So we started expanding our search area but at some point we also decided to stay within Europe because the moment we would go out it becomes way more difficult for us with visas and stuff like this but within Europe you still have a lot of options so we were just looking around in our own team because people already traveled themselves a lot in Europe and everyone had pretty good vibes in Portugal everyone liked the weather, nice people, beautiful landscapes so it felt good there was enough reason for us to focus on there Fun fact, our second choice would have been Slovenia very central in Europe as well super beautiful mountains, nice nature, friendly people but yeah, we went for Portugal and this actually helped a lot because suddenly we had a country to search within so it narrowed down a lot our search so in the next chapter Kat is going to show you how we actually found the pieces of land within Portugal Hey Kat here So yeah, together with Adrian from our team I've been looking for lands in Portugal and before giving a little summary of how we did that one thing we definitely learned is that this process is unique for everyone so there's probably thousands of ways how to look for and choose a piece of land so there's no universal recipe we could give to you in our case we had the luxury that we could send two people on field trips to start a network, explore lands and make first steps on the way so one thing which was very important for us in this process was to connect to local architects eco-villages, permaculture people in general people who are interesting and nice to gather around you and learn from when it comes to local processes, challenges and tricks so this really helped us to get an idea of what to even ask for and consider when looking at pieces of lands but another nice thing was that it created a little network of like-minded people which we can exchange in the future and maybe even do projects together so yeah, we tried to get help from local people but it's kind of hard for other people to help you if they don't really know what exactly you're looking for so we put our plan into a document with some more specific information about who we are, what we're planning to do and what we're looking for so that they could share it with other ones generally get a better idea about the project and its needs we also put this into a template so you can use it to communicate your project now the main part of these trips was obviously looking at a lot of pieces of lands of all sizes and shapes and locations like there was a super cool old pig farm where they unfortunately ended up planning a big road through there was a land on the hill with a super nice view maybe a little bit limited to wine farming there was places with big corks and other big trees and a river but often with kind of a tricky axis there were places with nice houses and constructions so perfect to start a workspace or a land at the river with a waterfall paradise but also quite tricky to build on so they were all different and had different ups and downs and one good and difficult thing for us was that we were quite flexible so our idea of what we need and want was actually still shaping so to help us filter out we made a checklist to fill out for each land covering aspects like size, price access to water and electricity but also buildability access to public transport and so on this checklist we will also share with you which might help you too for your land search so yeah this checklist definitely helped us to compare and narrow down the selection but to be honest there was also a lot of gut feeling involved because some lands just felt better and easier than the other ones finally we also got in touch with municipalities of the areas and lands we were interested in to see their reaction to the project and what we are planning to do and this was a really good thing because it creates a much better feeling if you know that you are welcome by your local government and they might even be able to help you and support you in one way or the other so yeah finally we decided on a piece of land and Dave will tell you more about it but one thing I really like about it is that we found it through our network so it kind of came along with some friends in the area and that really creates a much better feeling and connection to the land and a much nicer starting point for us and we called it the treasure stone land because there is a big rock on it and the people in the village say that there is a treasure hidden underneath so that's kind of cool but more about that later I hope this could give you an idea and maybe some useful information and now let's have a look into the buying process alright chapter 3 here we are actually going to buy the land and this is where it gets really exciting you go into all the paperwork technical details, talk with lawyers juicy stuff alright so as you might have figured out it will cost you money to buy a piece of land but even this always feels a bit abstract because maybe when you talk to the owner or you see a listing online you see a price let's say 70.000 euro for a land but you never really know is that really the final price and how much is going to go on top and you have taxes, transfer cost notary cost so I'm going to explain you what it all takes to buy a piece of land, the documents you need and what the price is based upon and this costs very a lot per country here in Portugal it's roughly between 3 and 10% of the additional price but let me break down these costs and paperwork for you so it's a bit more understandable first let's start by the main price it's always a bit abstract and hard to judge if someone asks you for a certain price whether it's too much or too little I guess it's never really too little generally you could have this rule of thumb that you just see the size so for instance our land was 10 hectares which is 100.000 square meters and you look locally what's the price of one square meter and then you see if it adds up to make the final price so the size of the land times the square meter price is the final price but it's not as simple as that because the land itself is generally divided into different kinds of land so for instance here you have rustic land urban land or mixed land so you kind of need to know what your land has and you can find this out by getting yourself a map of the land and seeing how your land is divided and where the land is based upon so for instance rustic land is generally more natural for agricultural it's not for building and urban land you can build, use for commercial reasons or industrial, and mix this where they are mixed so generally the price of urban land is way more expensive so for instance here rustic land is around 1 euro per square meter and urban land is around 70 euro per square meter so it changes quite a bit however this is also a very analytic looking at it, I mean you just look at the map and you see this is the price it should be but you don't really look at the land itself like does it have a nice landscape, are there beautiful trees is there a creek next to it is there water on the land stuff like this, this also changes the price of a land, this is also where it gets a bit more blurry and the value depends a lot on what you think the value is so after making this complex sum doing the analytic part and the intuition part we set our final price, also some negotiating at 109.000 euro so one of the things that goes on top of this price is the import tax or here it's called Imposto Municipal Sobre Transmissau on the Rosso de Imuweis IMT in short and it's also based on whether you have urban land rustic land or mixed land and also whether you're a resident or non-resident, so after making this complex sum we had to pay 6.000 euro, next you need to carbonate a predial and this is kind of the official document about your land, so it defines the size but also the borders, who are the neighbors what's on the land, what type of land is it is rustic or urban also who's the current owner so it really has all the information technically about the land and this is very important that you have it but I would say generally the current owner already has this or you can go to the local municipality to ask for it next is a very expensive one here in Portugal you need to get a physical number to make the transfer kind of boring, takes you one mooring, costs you 5 euro but you need it and finally you need to get a note to be involved to make the official transfer between the previous owner and yourself to make sure all the paperwork is properly signed and goes into the database and the price for this was for us 1000 euro so now we have all the paperwork in place we know our final price, 116.005 euro so ready to sign the deal and this is also where it gets tricky maybe the moment you would start touting I mean 116.000 euro sounds like a lot and for us we really see this thing as an investment because end of the day we would end up paying more if we would have to rent a house and rent a workspace for so many people so in the long term it actually does make sense but this is also scary this long term, like do I really want to live in this place for what, the coming 20 years really? of all the places in the world I choose this one and why this land and I don't know is the weather even good in the winter and the summer like you would have a lot of doubts I would say but never try, never know so then the signing itself in Portugal to sign the contract got this beautiful official piece with silver finishing maybe you get gold if you get a more expensive notary or maybe you could opt for bronze as well but yeah, this is the official paper but it was actually not me that bought the land like not me personally I only signed the paper because we bought it on behalf of the foundation because we really think it's better if the land is from a foundation and not an individual less personally involved in this whole thing and it becomes more just the place we all build together that's it, our foundation didn't have this much money laying around so we depended on friends and family to actually help us out to make these loans so we could purchase it so thank you very much for that and I told them we would pay them back in 5 years yeah, let's see alright, so enough talking about the land let's have a look at the thing we actually just bought so chapter number 4 let me show you the land so currently we are in the, what you could call it the workspace, future workspace but it's actually used to be an old shed on the land but it burned down a few years ago during a massive fire so now it's basically just a ruin and actually there's another ruin on the land also burned down also looks kind of like this a lot of broken things look like completely waste and they are pretty useless probably however what is super nice is having a ruin on the land that you get building ground so you could renovate the building or use the surface area to build a new structure so it saves a lot of hassle going to the paperwork yourself if you already find a ruin on the land and here you can see the other building structure also quite abandoned like the other one but actually when you see a building structure on a piece of land it doesn't really mean you can just rebuild there only when the previous owner actually legalized the building and put it in the paperwork because you often also find lands where there is a structure but it's not legal so it doesn't mean that you can rebuild it now in Portugal they have this one exception which is kind of interesting you can see it in this structure where they used to build it with these big massive natural rocks and they assume if you have a ruin on your land with those rocks that it's built before 1951 so before Portugal had building permits so if you have a ruin where rocks like that it can be legalized easily so here you can see the newer part being built but it's built on top of these old rocks but yeah in general the ruins are very abandoned and the land itself as well as you can see here like it's overgrowing with bushes and so yeah some work on the structures but also on the land itself the forest life isn't very exotic around here most of the native trees actually died a few years ago during a big forest fire so now you have a lot of young mimosa sprouting up because it's the most dominant tree in general I would say tree wise it's a bit of an ecological challenge for us to improve it over here which we also think is valuable for information to learn in the future for other people so yeah recovering the land after a big forest fire is a big part the land has two big grass patches which are very fertile with good soil for agriculture or growing vegetables and there's also quite some surface on the land covered with these big rocks from granite which looks oppressive but it's usually considered to be less valuable because you can't really grow vegetables on it people don't really build houses on it so it's kind of useless to have I mean it's nice to have around but in a way you don't need to own it because if the neighbor has it I mean you could still just walk on it as well yeah so I don't really know what to do with this but it also feels kind of unique to have this so let's see if we can find a good purpose for it and the land also has a few massive rocks and this is one of those things that is hard to put a price on you like it or you don't because they're generally kind of useless however they do feel like very earthed and a rooted cool place to be with the big rocks around so I think they're valuable and let's see what you're thinking isn't that a very good boulder unfortunately not really which are pretty sharp to hold with your hands but generally also kind of brittle sometimes time just chops off which is kind of scary to climb the land has two natural springs one is right here and it looks a bit swampy you could use a cleanup but it is very valuable to have water on your land and all year around as well so also in the hot summers and on the land there's also this beautiful little creek with super cold fresh water and it flows the whole year around which is kind of unique but to be fair now it is rain season so the water is much more than when we were here last time in summer and this is actually a good reason that I would highly recommend to visit your land multiple seasons because it can change a lot whether you're here in summer or winter the land itself is connected to the grid so there's electricity available which is generally quite a big plus especially in remote areas to be fair it's not hooked up yet so we still need to do that process with the electricity company so I don't know never done that but let's see but to be honest for us it's quite important to have electricity because we're going to run a big workspace with heavy machinery, tree phase do a lot of research and development so it's hard to go straight to renewable energy like solar but if you don't have any of that research going on I would highly recommend to go straight to renewable energy because it's pretty doable these days but for us it's more of a long term goal there's no internet connection on the land I mean in some areas you find some connection depending on the phone and the carrier you have but it's very basic and there isn't just like a fiber cable coming here or anything like that so we're going to depend on either expanding our 4G network here or we're going to get satellite internet the land is easy to access because you have these big roads you can easily go with them on a big truck one weird thing though this is actually a public road and it goes straight to the land so our land is over here and over there feels kind of weird to me this is a public road growing through the land but apparently it's quite normal around here and realistically also not many people are going to use this road and if it is it's probably a few farmers on their tractor dropping by which is kind of funny and about a 30 minutes drive away by car from here you find a close by village called Santa Comadau which has quite a lot of resources and shops library for internet but it also has a bus station and a train station that you could quite easily access this place pretty far with public transport so that was basically how you buy a piece of land a bit of a daunting process at first especially into this unknown world in a foreign country but looking back I would say it's quite doable and I hope this video helped you a bit to understand the steps it takes into this process and also make it a bit less scary if at this point you have any questions make sure to visit our discord community where you find a lot of like-minded people to answer your questions and have a look at the next chapter where we're actually going to move here so back home we converted an old van into a house and a kitchen and a workspace into a shipping container and you can see how we converted them and how they're being transported here into the land and if you want to make sure we can continue development and pay back the loans from those wonderful people that helped out make sure to visit support.project.com.com to see how you can help out thanks for watching see you in the next video