Two weeks in Brazil - topic 2 - Apartment Hunting

This is a hard blog to write because our apartment saga isn’t completely over yet. At this very moment, we found an apartment we really like that is walking distance to everything AND we have been approved by the real estate company to move it! (See pics below) This is all very good news!! Here in Brazil, individual people own apartments within a building and then they hire an imobiliaria (real estate company that does sales and rentals) to do all the dirty work. There really isn’t a situation like I experienced in the US where you like a building, meet with the manager, run a credit check and move in. Nope.. nope…. Nope!! The cool thing is at least they give you keys to all the apartments you wanna check out and you can go on your own.

This has been an EXTREMELY difficult and VERY long process. I will be brief but start at the beginning.

Two Weeks in Brazil Part II : Apartment Hunting (part a – finding an apt and getting approved)

Here we are, Ana and I, excited about finding our very own Brazilian apartment, walking around town (which doesn’t take more than an hour) checking out 5 or 6 apartments to see what we like from the first imobiliaria, Anagê. The first round of apartments didn’t get us many results so we go to a different imobiliaria, Visão, (there are about 50 in a 3 mile radius) to see some more apartments. They give us the keys again and we go on another search looking for 2 or 3 more. At this point, a day has already passed but we had found two really cool apartments! We returned to the imobiliaria, and started all the paper work, still excited about the idea of our own apartment only to be told that without at least three months of paystubs, we can’t move in without a cosigner. No big deal. We ask Ana’s grandfather to be our cosigner or “fiador” thinking everything is going to be smoooooth and easy. WRONG! Apparently Ana’s grandfather owning more properties and cars than all my friends put together isn’t enough.  Most of his money is paid directly from his company and not technically “retirement” money so they basically said he didn’t earn enough! What!!?? Ana’s parents and all her uncles and aunts didn’t have to work their whole lives because of money from this company and he doesn’t make enough!? Geeeez!

At this point three days have passed and we decided to go back to the first imobiliaria, that gave us 5-6 apartments that we didn’t like, Anagê. This time, we met with another agent , Daisy, and she showed us two of which we both loved! We explained the whole apartment, fiador, not making enough money problem to her and she said there should be no problem because they are mostly concerned with movement within the bank accounts. Of course we had to get some more documentation from her Grandfather, making him unhappy. He was always VERY happy to help his granddaughter and never considered cancelling the whole thing but he was getting more irritated each minute and Ana had to go over to his house on two separate occasions to talk to him, explain the situation and calm him down.

We went through the entire application process again, waiting 48 hours to find out there was another problem. Turns out, because someone had tried to overcharge the family for trash removal from their beach house. It seems there is a trash pickup in front of the house on the street and also one at the back of the property in the street. They were only supposed to pay for one pickup but they were being charged trash pickup both in front and in back. Of course, they didn’t pay and a “restriction” was put on their names and we were denied our apartment. Needless to say now her grandfather was PISSED. 

Ana’s dad told us that only 30% of all applications are approved because people just don’t like to pay their bills and end up with restrictions on their names or they just don’t make enough. It also seems that if you want to rent an apartment, you need one of these things.

1)      You have to already own property and earn more than 3x your rent,

2)      pay the rental security and make more than 3x the rent,

3)      or get a fiador that owns property AND earns more than 3x the rent.

Sure sounds simpler than it is….. =)

Our next option was to get Ana’s uncle, whom had volunteered to help, to be our fiador so, yet again, the process ensued. Three more days passed during which everyone was trying to find alternatives for us. We talked to a friend of Ana’s Mom whom owned her own apartment and was willing to rent to us directly without an agency but we would have to wait until December. As much as I enjoy where we are staying, there just isn’t enough room for all of us along with 4 dogs! We also talked to the sister of the human resources manager at my job and she was going to help us as well. Neither of these options ended up panning out unfortunately.

We got the word that we were denied AGAIN (this makes three) and that there was a restriction on Ana’s uncle’s and aunt’s names as well. At this point, we were really starting to think that we would be living with Ana’s dad for awhile and starting to figure out how to store our clothes etc. We thought long and hard about it before moving to our last option. If I was to work for three months and collect my paystubs, then all I would have to do is pay a rental security company an amount of 3 times the rent per year to guarantee the apartment for us. I was willing to pay double the rent at this point strictly out of frustration!

The next thing we knew everything changed dramatically. After we called Ana’s her uncle to tell him the news about the restriction he was convinced there had been a mistake and did some research. Guess what, there was no restriction so Ana’s dad called a neighbor of his, who is a manager at the imobiliaria Anagê that had denied us earlier in the afternoon, and asked him what the restrictions were on Ana’s uncles name since it appeared they didn’t exist. Well the neighbor had no idea we had even put in an application so he told Ana’a dad to return to the agency, bring all the paperwork back and he would look into it. Within an hour we were APPROVED! Turns out the restriction was VERY old and should not have been even considered in our application. Talk about strict approvals! I think if Ana’s dad didn’t know this neighbor personally, we would have ended up living at her Dad’s apartment for 3-4 months and then went the rental security route which definitely isn’t ideal or cheap.

Needless to say Ana and I are both relieve AND excited!

Now, I am sure this blog seems long and may be boring BUT I left out so many other challenges and details that I swear I could write a book just about this! If nobody makes it to the end of this blog, it really doesn’t matter because whats important here is the memory of what it took to get an apartment.

We still have to turn on the power, get the contracts signed and delivered, get the keys and start filling it with stuff.. Maybe I’ll save that part for another day.

Stay tuned for the next part. =)

PS. For those of you who know of the situation, doesn’t this drama reseemble our Permanent visa drama?

Here are a few TERRIBLE pics of the apartment that they agency took. I will take my own pictures later, once we get the keys!
Note: You may notice what seems like two toilets in the bathrooms. Nope. The second one is a bidet. Very common here in Brazil although I don't think anyone uses them. Sometimes its just a hygenic "hose" coming out of the wall to clean yourself with someone. I guess its always an option if you run out of toilet paper. =)
Also note, no water tanks.