This Costa Verde / Galicia Quinta Villa & Land Is For Sale

Quality traditional granite and brick built, three storey, 500 sqm living space, five bedroom villa / quinta with around 11,000* sqm of riverfront land for sale at offers around €1,400,000

Location: Just outside Moncao on the River Minho in the Portuguese region of Costa Verde, overlooking the border River Minho, Spanish countryside and mountains of Galicia.

There is a tax "IMT or Imposto Municipal sobre Transamissões" and "Stamp Duty" on all property purchases in Portugal. The IMT for our property we understand is 6%, the stamp duty is 0.8%.

Price excludes all furniture: this can be purchased separately from vendors.

Please note: 10,500 sqm is an estimation based on aerial photography and on the grounds within the walls / fencing, which does not include the river bank area itself. Technically the quinta also owns the riverbank section (around 3,500 sqm) but has no privacy rights to it, as riverbanks are public in Portugal.

Most of the land is designated "Urbano" About 9000 sqm is Urbano, another 1500 sqm is agricultural (should be able to upgraded in title), which means if the buyer wanted, more properties could be built in the grounds; most land titles in this area are "Rusitco" with a small section for the house part itself designated "Urbano"; people do this to save a little on tax but with current zoning and conservation regulations they would not be able to convert to Urbano. Because this quinta has Urbano land already, the owners have development rights according to that title. Urbano land is therefore much more valuable than "Rustico" and with this much close to the river, this property and grounds may be of interest to developers. With the extra building land option noted below, it is feasible someone could build five additional family homes.

Option to buy around 3,200 sqm adjacent building land (for one or two 4 bedroom houses) €110,000 including building permit if required. The IMT for building land is 6.5%, stamp duty 0.8%

Adjoining woodland (7,200 sqm) just out of view to the left was recently offered to the current owners for €100,000 if the buyer is interested; although it can never be built upon, just adding it to the existing land parcel should see its value double, perhaps triple. The IMT for rustic land is 5% plus stamp duty again at 0.8%

Contact the owner directly: requires Javascript enabled to protect them from automated email harvesters - if you can not click the email link, the email address is .

It is now impossible to buy riverfront land (such as this quinta is located on) to build a property; the River Minho is protected by a Spanish / Portuguese zoning exclusion zone. The quinta's privacy is assured due to the fact the existing owners bought the only adjacent land which overlooks theirs, sectioned (fenced / screened) off the closest part so no developments the other side would look down upon their grounds. To the East are the neighbours, to the South is the River Minho (which is protected), to the North is the sectioned off new parcel of land, to the West is protected woodland. It is very rare indeed to be able to buy property in such an up and coming area with such guaranteed privacy.

This property is also rare because of the quality of build as much as for the location. Although the Portuguese are renowned builders, modern construction here as elsewhere is of double wall / air gap traditional brick and / or concrete breeze block. Many of the old houses in Portugal on the real estate market have single granite walls, which are affected by damp and very hard to treat and insulate after the fact. Because of Portugal's past fascist government, the only quality traditional build homes from that era were built by the land owners; these are the true "quintas". Very few original quintas come onto the market as they tend to stay in the family. Actually, quintas can be quite unremarkable, even austere;this is a rare exception. The property was built in 1983 by the eldest son of that family, an architect, while they were still fairly affluent. As a result, the lower solid granite walls, traditional brick upper walls and solid reinforced concrete floors / supports / inner roof reflect a bygone era in building. Being the son's home, it was built on what was a parcel of their land next to the river before conservation regulations would have prevented this. Historically the Portuguese built quintas near the main road, in order they could trade and see who passed their land, so a home of this build quality and location is extremely rare; there is only one other like it in the whole of Northern Portugal (on another river slightly further south). The only reason the original owner built his home overlooking the river was because he liked to go boating and wanted his own slipway! If it were not for his hobby, this villa / quinta would not have been built where it is.

As the local family who built this property had to sell parcels of their land in order to maintain their own properties & lifestyles as things changed in Portugal, so two more houses were built next door by people who bought land from them, but not with the same views and / or build quality; neither of these two houses overlook this quinta or its private areas, but the neighbours do make it feel less remote.

The present owners did not buy the villa / quinta to sell it, but circumstances (concerning family and friends) mean they would like to move to the Southern hemisphere. It is offered for sale with or without all furniture; the finest solid chestnut and walnut Portuguese furniture money can buy; prices can be negotiated directly. Also available is a quality collection of around 100 swords which are primarily displayed in four specially made recessed cabinets in the main dining room. The collection (see most of it here: Sword Auctions & Sales) is valued around £65,000 (€82,000) but is available to any buyer of the quinta at €50,000 if of interest; the current owner buys and sells and makes a profit in doing so.

Recent average house price increases in Galicia across the river have been the strongest / largest for Spain as a whole (see: Spain Price History) which has "enjoyed" a housing price boom like most of Europe. Portugal (excluding the Algarve) escaped that boom and so prices are still much lower than other areas of western Europe (see: Portugal Price History), making Portugal one of the top western Europe / EU investment tips at this time. Assetz show Portugal as having one of the safest and best investment returns (Property Investment Tracker).

Other Quinta / Villa Facts:

Set out over three floors, the lower floor is part built into the ground, the upper floor is within the roof.
Recently installed oil fired central heating (it gets cold in winter) and fully insulated roof (insulates against heat in summer and cold in winter).
Air conditioned lower floor TV lounge and dining room, with adjacent large fully fitted kitchen which itself leads out onto an outdoor granite dining area with spectacular river / mountain views.
Long private "kubos" granite laid driveway leading from video / door entry system controlled front electronic gates (both double vehicle and single person gates), goes down all the way around our house and down to our river gate (manual).
Large gate house which doubles as a dog pen.
Large separate garages for 3 vehicles plus adjacent large dog pound.
Full sized swimming pool with children's section, fenced and gated for child safety. The concrete pool was built by one of the leading Spanish companies with strong foundations and a 20 year guarantee.
Large water fountain next to house and family garden area, again fenced and gated for child safety and to prevent dogs from entering the area; family garden with large stone bbq has big established cork oak tree in it which is a perfect shade tree.
Five bedrooms, one with en suite bathroom and large balcony overlooking private grounds and river. Two of these bedrooms are on the top floor and are perfect guest rooms, with the other three on the middle family floor and benefiting from a large family bathroom.
Telephone line (with broadband), mains electricity and mains water, plus very good mobile (with data) cover from both Spain and Portugal (useful for phone and Internet backup), and a large parabola satellite TV dish which currently feeds two British SKY TV boxes (very good signal) in different areas of the house.
Large duck pond / irrigation tank which is fed by a small natural water spring and / or a river water pump (licensed); this tank feeds the ground's irrigation systems including sprinklers and drip emitters.
Extensive mostly granite pathways around the grounds, including 3 sets of steps down the bank section of our grounds to the lower perimeter fence / conifer hedge screen.
Grounds completely walled / fenced to height of 2 meters. We have a burglar / intruder alarm with mobile phone connection also. Although this is a virtually crime free area, our security (including dogs) make us a very unattractive proposition for what criminal activity there is or one day may be.
Large chicken house and coop away from the house (can barely hear them) near the river gate, allows us to have free range chickens which are protected from wildlife, etc. Plum and other trees / bushes help screen this out of house view.
Large vineyard (255 vines) with wine and several types of eating / table grapes, plus 6 kiwi fruit vines.
Fruit orchard (cherry, peach, plum, apple, pear, apricot, nectarine, lemon, lime, mandarin, navel orange) with adjacent greenhouse.
Large rock garden runs alongside large part of driveway down to river.
Large bank / hill section of grounds planted with many fruit and nut trees (mostly cherry plus hazelnut, almond, strawberry and pineapple guava, cooking and eating apple, Asian pear, pomegranate, walnut, nispero and quince used to make marmalade) plus flowering and erosion control bushes / plants (yellow jasmine, etc.).
Large circular flower garden outside the lower floor TV lounge.
Flower garden and summer house next to the duck pond; fence around pond has passion fruit, clematis and other vines growing on it.
Vegetable and second fruit tree (red / black and white figs, persimmon, arbutus, apple, pear, guava, pomegranate, Asian pear) garden area near to the river / lower perimeter fence. Granite slab and Nerium Oleander flowering bush walkway runs alongside the perimeter fence which is also planted with a cypress bush / tree screen.

Original architect plan below: perimeter wall / fence, garages and pool have since been added, plus extra land bought / added.