Real projects and straight advice on buying, surveying and renovating in Porto and across Portugal — written by the builder doing the work, not a marketing department.
Practical advice and real jobs from buying, surveying and renovating in Porto and across Portugal — the questions clients actually ask.
A granite house on a quinta in the Serra da Estrela foothills, eighteen months into a self-managed rebuild and stalled at the slab. Pricing the rest honestly, phasing out a wing to make it affordable, finding a local builder and keeping the contract in the owners’ name.
Read it →A foreign investor group, a 750 m² manor house in the Algarve and a hotel plan. What an independent project manager does before the purchase — condition, three costed scenarios, the heritage zone, the AL cap, the 6% IVA question — and why we’re now running the build.
Read it →The replies get shorter, then they stop, then nobody turns up. What actually happens when a contractor walks off a job here — the payments, the licence, the half-built work going backwards — what to do in the first week, and how an unfinished renovation gets finished.
Read guide →The one element every buyer skips and every budget underestimates. What is actually up there on a Porto building, why a partial repair is often the expensive option, and the difference between a roof that needs a few tiles and a roof that needs a structure.
Read guide →Clients ring in March wanting to be finished by July. Allow three to six months for quoting and getting in the queue, or you end up hiring whoever happens to be free — and there is usually a reason they are free.
Read guide →Most architects and designers in Portugal hand over a drawing and walk away from what happens next. Mafalda runs the sites. What changes when the person specifying the work has stood on the scaffold.
Read guide →Title disputes, boundaries described by men who died in the 1970s, ruins that can't legally be rebuilt, vineyards that are a licence rather than a field, and the free BUPi georeferencing deadline of 30 September 2026.
Read guide →A builder's version of the last six weeks of a new-build purchase — the walk-through, the auto de receção, the escritura, and the one window where you hold all the leverage. Do the checking on the right side of that date.
Read guide →The most important document at a Portuguese new-build handover — and most buyers sign it in twenty minutes. What it commits you to, the three rules, and the phrase "com reservas" that does the work.
Read guide →How to snag a new-build apartment properly: what to test in walk order, the defects that cluster in new builds here, and what a thermal camera finds that eyes can't. Do it yourself, or bring someone in.
Read guide →Same builder, same week, opposite advice. The renovated house we told a nervous buyer to buy (and how the snag list took more off the price than the survey cost), and the beautiful apartment we told them to walk away from — because nobody had looked at the roof.
Read it →Freezing in January, windows streaming, black mould in the corners. It's not that the house is bad — it's how it was built and renovated. Why the usual fixes fail, and what actually works: insulation, glazing, ventilation and heating, in the right order.
Read guide →Real 2026 renovation costs from a builder who prices this work — ballpark figures per square metre, the variables that move them, the 6% IVA rule that catches foreign buyers out, and how to manage the job when you can't be on site or in the language.
Read guide →The Simplex Urbanístico reform sped up permits — and quietly moved risk onto you. Why unapproved work and a Caderneta that doesn't match the building is now the buyer's problem to catch.
Read guide →Everyone tells you to get three quotes. Nobody tells you they won’t be comparable — because nobody told the builders exactly what to price. Why the cheapest quote is usually the emptiest, and how a proper tender package fixes it.
Read guide →The most common way foreign owners lose money on a Portuguese build isn’t fraud — it’s paying for work that hasn’t been done. Stage payments tied to inspected work, retentions, deposits, and what belongs in the contract.
Read guide →Survey or home inspection — same job, different word. No seller disclosure, an agent who works for the seller, expensive defects behind fresh paint. What an independent survey covers, when to do it, and what it costs (from €490 + IVA, report in 24h).
Read guide →No certification behind the logo, awards you can effectively buy, reviews you can't trust, several websites routing to one operator, deposits to firms that vanish. Who you're really hiring — and the ten-minute checks that protect you.
Read guide →The same problems come up time after time, usually behind fresh paint — damp, end-of-life roofs, parapet leaks, hidden rot, tired electrics — plus the shortcuts hidden in brand-new builds. How to tell a cosmetic issue from an expensive one.
Read guide →Groundwater and the water table, rising damp, the roof leak that surfaces a floor below, condensation — the four places water gets in, and why finding the source beats any treatment. A builder's guide.
Read guide →What to check before you sign the CPCV — the defects we find again and again on real surveys, from damp and roofs to the condominium paperwork almost nobody reads. Two pages, from a builder, free.