Hi there,
Today I tell you how ridiculous real estate agencies are in Portugal, and I tell you what you have to ask to make sure the property is not illegal.
In several previous posts I have been telling you how I was scammed buying a house in Porto and I have given tools and knowledge to help people who want to invest in Portugal, so they don’t get scammed like me.
Although my recommendation is not to invest in Portugal.
In summer 2023 we were looking at houses with a friend from Zome Matosinhos with the idea of buying a house that was better than ours and we didn’t find any.
Besides, almost all the houses we visited were in illegal situation.
Here are the posts:
In the spring of 2024 as we had money to invest, we considered 2 options: buy a small apartment in Porto to rent or buy a house around Peneda Geres to spend the weekends and use it for exchanges.
We started looking for houses and there came a point when we stopped looking due to the excessive incompetence of the real estate agencies.
When I lived in Spain, the real estate agents seemed like vultures, but at least they were more competent than in Portugal. Also, in Spain you can find properties that are not in the hands of real estate agencies while in Portugal it is almost impossible.
So, with the experience I had after having been swindled and after all the problems I had to solve with my house, I knew perfectly well what I had to ask to verify that a house was legal and would not give me problems in the future.
This was my list of questions:
- Does the house have a habitability certificate (licença de utilização) and is the total area of the house properly registered in the cartographic records of the Municipal Chamber?
As I told you in previous articles, many of the houses in Porto are illegal and have illegal construction that is not registered in the Municipal Chamber, so you must ask for the official mapping records to verify that the entire area of the property is legal.
In February 2024 they approved the Simplex Law, which simplified the process of legalization of houses and made it no longer mandatory to have a habitability certificate to sell a property.
This benefited us because we would not have any problem if we wanted to sell the house, but it made the disaster and the anarchy of the real estate sector even worse.
That is why, although it was not mandatory, it is very important to request it to be able to check that everything with the house is in order.
- Does the owner have the invoices for all the electrical appliances in the house?
Asking for this in Portugal is like asking for a unicorn.
In Spain it was the most logical thing to give the invoices to your buyer if you sold the house with appliances.
In the spring of 2024, even though they were newly renovated houses and sold with an equipped kitchen, it turns out that no one had invoices. Where did these people get the appliances from?
Knowing that the Portuguese are experts in scams and swindles, if they have no invoice for appliances that are supposed to be new, it means there is something shady going on.
- Does the house have the telecommunications installation required by law in Portugal?
One of the illegalities of my house is that it does not have the telecommunications installation required by law in Portugal because, although a renovation was made and everything is new, they did not bother to put the telecommunications installation, so there are no sockets to put neither the telephone cable nor the network cable.
That is illegal and it makes no sense to do a complete renovation, leaving the house without telecommunications installation. But those who do construction work in Portugal are worse than cavemen.
That is why you must make sure that the installation is done correctly because if not, it costs around 5000 euros to do it.
- Are there sockets for the telephone cable and for the network cable?
I added this question because real estate agents are so stupid that they do not understand what a telecommunication installation is.
- Do you know which company provides internet services in the area?
Since we were looking at houses in the middle of the mountain, it was important to verify that we could have internet at home.
- Do you have a floor plan of the property?
There are 2 types of floor plans: the one that the real estate agency makes with any computer program so that one can see how the property is distributed and the floor plan that is requested at the Municipal Chamber.
If they don’t have the floor plan that the real estate agency normally makes, it means that they haven’t even made the effort for that. Think that real estate agencies charge 6% commission to take photos and advertise a property, little more.
In other words, they charge a fortune for the minimum effort. And many times, they do not even make that minimum effort.
Then, you should ask for the floor plan of the Municipal Chamber before paying for the reservation of the property and before signing anything to make sure that everything is in order.
If the owner or the real estate agency refuses to ask for it, it is because they want to rip you off.
- What is the certified electrical power of the house?
In this post you have the story of what happened to me regarding this matter:
When buying a house, you should make sure that the certified electricity power is something that will allow you to use all your appliances and get through the winter, otherwise you will have problems.
Especially, when there are old houses that have been renovated and as things in Portugal are done in a beastly and illegal way, it is most likely that they will leave everything as it is.
As with the telecommunications installation, they are not going to upgrade the certified power as it is something that costs money and a lot of time.
As to be able to increase the certified power you will need the work of an electrician that depending on the case can reach thousands of euros and take more than a year, the best thing would be not to buy a house that has a certified electricity power lower than what you need.
What is the contracted power of the house?
This information will let you know how much electricity the house may need and how efficient it is.
- What is the IMI value you pay?
This is also very important because in Portugal people used to not declare the total meters of the house to pay less taxes.
So, with the floor plan of the Municipal Chamber, the caderneta predial, the certidão permanente and the last IMI receipt, you can make sure that everything is in order.
While in Spain asking for the last IBI receipt was the most normal thing to do, in Portugal they look at you badly if you ask for it.
- Do you have an invoice for the renovation work done on the house? How long ago was it done?
As I have been telling you, in Portugal everybody commits tax fraud and almost nobody wants to give you an invoice.
So, it is very common for people to do complete renovations in their houses without asking for an invoice to save 23% VAT, but that also means that you have no guarantee.
The renovation works in Portugal have 5 years of guarantee by law, but if you don’t have an invoice, it is almost impossible that someone from the company will show their face when you have problems and you will surely have them.
But of course, people who renovate a house to sell it do not ask for the invoice because they know that the problems will be for the buyers.
In my experience, if you have done a complete renovation and they don’t want to give you an invoice, don’t buy.
These were the basic things I asked every time I saw a house that might interest me.
These were the houses we saw:
Moradia em banda à venda, Agra – 95.000 euros
This house was sold furnished and was perfect to move into immediately and was just what I was looking for: 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.
The downside was that there was no washing machine in any of the pictures and there didn’t seem to be a place to put it.
I told my friend to ask all the questions and inquire as to availability to visit; we were ready to buy immediately.
It turns out that the owner of the house, who was the same realtor knew nothing, had no paperwork for anything and didn’t want to waste her time with people who had questions. She also didn’t have any availability for visiting the house.
Logically, we ruled it out.
Moradia independente à venda na estrada sem nome, 5 – 119.500 euros
This house was from Zome so I figured it would be easier to arrange everything since my friend was also from Zome.
The funny thing is that she was saying that Zome is the one that charges the highest commission in Portugal because they work the best, but this ad was missing pictures and the realtor who had the house didn’t know anything about anything either.
There was also no way of knowing where the washing machine was supposed to be placed.
Things are so absurdly absurd in Portugal that there are houses in which a complete renovation is carried out and there is not even the installation to be able to place a washing machine.
Logically, we also discarded this house too.
Moradia independente à venda, Em556-3, 1. Santiago de Piães, Cinfães – 100.000 euros
This house was in the middle of nature in a beautiful area called Castelo de Paiva.
The house appeared to be independent and self-sufficient because water came from a well and electricity from solar panels.
In addition to asking all the questions I listed above, I asked for documentation on the capacity of the water well and the solar panel battery. They had nothing and knew nothing.
They also had no invoices for anything.
The funniest thing is that on the website it said that the house was in the “legalization process” and when my friend asked how that process was going and when they were going to have the habitation permit, it turns out that they had stopped the process because they had received an offer and the person who made that offer did not want the house to be legalized.
This was clearly a lie.
They had no floor plans of the house and no architectural project of the integral renovation that had been done.
How was it possible that they had no architectural project for a house that was supposedly in the process of legalization?
In order to legalize a house, the minimum they had to have delivered was the architectural project and the topographic survey.
The reality is that everything was a lie, and they were selling an illegal house that surely the Municipal Chamber would never give the certificate of occupancy.
In addition, surely neither the water well nor the solar panels were sufficient to supply the house, so we were going to be left with a house that was not even going to be usable.
Logically, we ruled that out as well.
At this point, we stopped looking for houses because if nobody knows anything or has any paperwork, how are they supposed to sell a property?
So, we decided to start looking at houses in Spain because there we would surely not find the abnormalities we had found in Portugal.