The roof you don’t own — and the bill you do

A 1970s apartment in Bonfim — sound, well-proportioned, with original parquet floors in lovely condition. The buyer was focused on the flat. We were more interested in what sat three floors above their ceiling.

Inside: a strong buy

The internal fabric was genuinely good. The consumer unit and the plumbing had been updated, the original parquetry was excellent, the light was good, and there were no structural concerns. Taken on its own four walls, the flat was an easy yes.

Above: the part you can’t see from the sofa

The shared roof over the building was at the end of its serviceable life — tiles heavily colonised by lichen, ridge capping past it, parapet flashings failing. And the parapet wall itself showed cracking where previous mesh-and-render repairs had reopened. That parapet was the primary pathway for water into the apartment below: there was already moisture showing at the master-bedroom ceiling and historic water tracking in the attic, all consistent with the roof’s condition.

Here’s why that matters more in an apartment than a house. The roof isn’t yours to fix on your own timeline. It’s a shared element, paid for through the permilagem — your fraction of the condominium — and it has to be agreed and funded by all the owners together. So the buyer needed to know, before signing, that the building’s roof was heading for major work, what their share of it would be, and whether the condominium actually had the reserve fund to do it.

The small tells

The details rounded out the picture: an air-conditioning compressor boxed into an enclosure with no ventilation, slowly shortening its own life; a condensate pipe punched straight through the façade and left; surface rust on the balcony handrail. None of it fatal — but together it tells you how a place has really been looked after.

The point

The most expensive thing in an apartment purchase is often the part you can’t see from inside it. We told them to obtain the condominium minutes and the works schedule, factor their roof share into the offer, and proceed on that basis. A survey that stops at your own front door isn’t a survey — it’s why you want an independent one before you buy.

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