Portuguese law gives you years of warranty. It does not tell you whom to claim it from, and it does not wait for you.
The photo arrived on WhatsApp at eight thirty in the morning. A white wall, a window, and beneath it a gray stain in the shape of a map of an island that doesn't exist. Under the photo, one sentence in English: “It's getting bigger.”
The photo was sent by the tenant of Orit, a nurse who works at the big hospital in Porto and has rented the apartment from her for two years. Orit forwarded it to me three months later. In those three months the stain kept growing, and the tenant moved to sleep in the living room.
Orit bought the apartment in 2023, in a new building in the Bonfim neighborhood, from a local development company. She did not buy off plan. She waited for the building to be finished, visited the apartment twice, and even paid an engineer to go and inspect it before signing. The key arrived in January 2024. Everything that could be checked, she checked. “I knew new construction was the risk,” she told me. “That's why I waited for there to be a building.”
Porto was not a random choice. Orit had toured it three times before deciding, walked the neighborhoods, sat in cafés near the hospital and asked how much it costs to rent an apartment. Her calculation was conservative: a new apartment, a long-term tenant, a modest yield and no surprises. For two years it worked exactly that way. The rent came in on the first of the month, the tenant sent a photo every few months of a new plant on the balcony, and Orit nearly forgot she owned an apartment in Portugal.
When the photo arrived, Orit did what most of us would do. She called the number she had in her phone, that of the site manager from the construction period. Nobody answered. He was already on another project, in another city, with another contractor. Then she spoke with the management company that looks after the apartment. “It's condensation,” they told her there. “Have the tenant open the windows. We'll bring a dehumidifier.”
They brought a dehumidifier. Another month passed.
When Orit called me, her first question was whether she still had anything to talk about. Two years had passed since the key. She was sure it was already too late.
It wasn't too late. Someone who buys a residential apartment in Portugal from a company that engages in selling, in a transaction signed from 2022 onward, is covered by the consumer protection law that came into force that year. The law gives ten years for defects in the structural components of the building, and five years for other non-conformities. And if the defect is discovered within the period, the presumption is that it was already there on the day of handover, and it is the seller who must prove otherwise.
But notice that word. The seller.
Not the contractor who built. Not the site manager who doesn't answer. The company that signed the deed opposite Orit, the one that received the money. All of Orit's conversations in those three months were with people who owed her nothing.
The first thing we did was send an engineer. Not to guess, but so that there would be a document. He opened the plaster near the window frame, and within twenty minutes had a name for the problem: water penetration from outside, through the joint between the frame and the facade. Not condensation. The dehumidifier dried the air in the room while the wall kept drinking.
With that report we turned to the development company. A formal letter, in Portuguese, with the photos, the dates, the report, and a reference to the law.
The first reply arrived after two weeks: they would send paint. We politely declined. Paint covers a stain, it does not solve a waterproofing problem. The second reply was more serious. It turned out this was not the only apartment in the building, and that the building committee had also already approached them. The facade is common property, and the real repair required scaffolding outside and approval by the meeting. Another month.
In April the scaffolding arrived. By June the wall was dry, painted, and the tenant moved back to the bedroom.
The development company paid for the repair down to the last euro. But for the three months the tenant slept in the living room, Orit gave her a rent reduction, and that sum the company refused to reimburse. It was a few hundred euros. Orit thought about it for several days, and then decided not to enter proceedings over it. “I paid tuition,” she told me.
I think about those months, the ones that passed before she called. Not because of the money, it wasn't large. Because of the assumption that stood behind them: that after the key, whatever happens in the apartment is already her matter. Most of the investors I meet know the warranty period as a number. Far fewer know who exactly owes it to them, and what must be in hand in order to claim it seriously. Portuguese law is generous. It simply doesn't call you when the wall starts to get damp.
The question I would ask in your place
- Who exactly is the seller who signed opposite me on the sale deal, and do I know how to reach them even after the project has been closed?
- When something looks wrong in an apartment I don't live in, who documents it, and when?
- How long am I willing to wait for the answer “it's nothing” before I bring someone to tell me what it is?
Stories are based on real situations, with identifying details changed. Not legal advice.
Translated from the Hebrew original. עברית