A Portuguese bank valuation is not a survey, and a down-valuation is not an opinion about the neighbourhood. Lei n.º 153/2015, de 14 de setembro requires the valuation report to describe the property including the estado de conservação, so the perito avaliador de imóveis has looked at the building and recorded a finding. What reaches the buyer is a figure with that description removed. Three findings move the figure down more often than any other: an area exceeding the tolerance in artigo 28.º-A of the Código do Registo Predial, works carried out without municipal authorisation, and the recorded condition of the fabric. Since Decreto-Lei n.º 10/2024, de 8 de janeiro removed municipal verification from the deed on 1 January 2024, that figure is sometimes the only warning the transaction produces. An InspectOS Simplex Safe inspection converts a number back into a documented finding.
Table of Contents
- What does Portuguese law require a bank valuation to contain?
- Which three findings move the number down?
- Why does the finding reach the buyer with the explanation removed?
- What is still available once the number has landed?
- Does a valuation at the asking price mean the building is sound?
- Frequently Asked Questions
What does Portuguese law require a bank valuation to contain?
Lei n.º 153/2015 requires every valuation report to describe the property's location, estado de conservação, construction type and use, under the annex to artigo 20.º.
Lei n.º 153/2015, de 14 de setembro governs the activity of the perito avaliador de imóveis who provides services to entities of the financial system. Article 1.º sets that scope, and practitioners register with the Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários (CMVM).
The annex the law refers to in artigo 20.º sets the mandatory content of the report in three blocks: identification elements, valuation elements, and accountability elements. Inside the valuation block, the first required item is a description of the property covering its location characteristics, estado de conservação, construction type and use.
So the building's condition is not outside the exercise. It is a required line in a regulated document.
The distinction that matters to a buyer sits one step further in. The condition line exists to support a value. A perito records that a roof is in poor condition because poor condition changes the figure. A perito does not establish why the roof is in that state, how far the problem has travelled, whether the structure underneath it is affected, or what putting it right involves. Those are different questions, they need instruments, and nobody has asked them.
Artigo 16.º makes peritos avaliadores liable for damage caused by errors or omissions in their reports, and names the entidade contratante and clientes bancários among the parties who can suffer that damage. Read what that settles and what it does not. It identifies who the law contemplates being harmed by a bad valuation. Whether a particular buyer holds a direct action against a particular perito is a question for a Portuguese advogado on the facts, and this guide does not answer it.
None of this describes anyone failing at their job. The perito performs the task the statute defines. The gap is that the Portuguese purchase assigns nobody the other task.
Which three findings move the number down?
Area beyond the artigo 28.º-A tolerance, works without municipal authorisation, and recorded conservation state account for most down-valuations on Portuguese resale property.
Area that does not reconcile. Portugal runs two parallel records that disagree more often than buyers expect: the Caderneta Predial Urbana at the Autoridade Tributária and the descrição predial at the Conservatória do Registo Predial. Artigo 28.º-A of the Código do Registo Predial waives harmonisation where the difference against the larger figure stays within 10% for urban property, 20% for rural land without geometric cadastre, and 5% for rural land with it. Above those thresholds the records must be corrected before a clean sale, and the correction runs through a topographic survey and two separate authorities. The three record comparisons a buyer can run alone are set out in the guide to the habitation licence in Portugal.
Works nobody authorised. A valuation prices what transfers with clean title. A part of the property that carries no municipal authorisation contributes nothing to that figure, even though it is standing there and the asking price almost certainly included it. This produces a piece of arithmetic worth doing: the gap between the asking price and the valuation is often close to the value the seller attributed to the part that is not on the file, which makes the difference itself a rough measure of what is missing. Unauthorised works carry Regime Jurídico da Urbanização e Edificação fines from €498.80 to €99,759.58 for individuals and up to €249,398.95 for companies, and the obligation follows the property. How to identify these before an offer is covered in the guide to illegal extensions in Portugal.
Recorded conservation state. This is the line the annex requires, and there is usually something real behind it. Across Portugal 35.8% of buildings need repair, split into 21.8% light, 9.4% medium and 4.6% deep (INE, Censos 2021), which puts serious condition problems at 14% once medium and deep are taken together. On that share of the stock a perito has something to write down, and what gets written down stays with the entity that commissioned the report.
Why does the finding reach the buyer with the explanation removed?
The valuation is commissioned after the offer, the report goes to the contracting entity, and the buyer receives the figure without the description behind it.
Sequence explains most of it.
An offer is accepted. A Contrato-Promessa de Compra e Venda (CPCV) is often signed, which exposes the sinal under Código Civil artigo 442.º. Only then does the lending entity instruct a valuation, and the report goes to the entity that commissioned it. The buyer learns the outcome as a figure, arriving through a channel built to answer a different question.
Around that, nothing else in the transaction is looking at the building. Decreto-Lei n.º 10/2024, de 8 de janeiro removed the municipal verification that used to sit at the deed, with effect from 1 January 2024, so no public official now compares the authorised property against the physical one before a sale completes. The full mechanics are in the guide to the Simplex Urbanístico regime.
From 1 October 2026, Decreto-Lei n.º 108/2026, de 29 de maio, whose entry into force was deferred to that date by Decreto-Lei n.º 155-B/2026, de 31 de julho, requires the professional titling the transaction to record the seller's declared urbanistic-title position in the deed. That surfaces the question at the deed. It obliges nobody to compare the declaration against the building.
The result is an ordering problem rather than a conspiracy. The one document in the purchase that looked at the property and wrote down its condition is the one the buyer did not commission and cannot read. The one moment the law now creates arrives after the price is fixed. What the buyer gets in between is a number, and the pressure that follows a compressed signing timetable is covered in the guide to the CPCV signing deadline.
What is still available once the number has landed?
Requesting the description behind the figure, commissioning a measured comparison and pricing the legalisation route all remain available after a down-valuation.
Four moves, in order.
Ask for the description rather than the figure. Ask the lending entity what the valuation records about the property's estado de conservação and about its areas. Some will share the report or a summary of it. The request costs nothing, and every answer is useful, including a refusal, because it tells the buyer whether the finding is retrievable.
Put the specific question to the seller. Not whether everything is in order, which invites a yes. Ask whether the enclosed terrace, the annex or the pool appears on the approved drawings, and ask for the licence number and the date of the last authorised alteration.
Commission the measured comparison. An engineer registered with the Ordem dos Engenheiros measures the built footprint against the approved drawings, assesses whether the work is sound, and records the result in a dated document carrying a cédula number. What that document contains is set out in the guides to what a pre-purchase inspection covers and what a property condition report contains.
Price the route before reopening the price. Legalising a boundary wall runs €750 to €1,400. An annex runs €850 to €1,500, rising to €2,000 to €8,000 for a standard 50 m² structure. Alteration works inside a moradia run €2,500 to €4,000, and legalising an unlicensed construction runs €5,500 to €7,000, with municipal fees varying by regulamento. A figure changes a negotiation. An objection does not.
The legal position underneath all four is worth stating plainly. Código Civil artigo 913.º gives a remedy for hidden defects. Artigo 342.º n.º 1 places the burden of proof on whoever invokes the right. Artigo 916.º gives one year from discovery to give notice, and artigo 917.º six months from that notice to bring the action on an ordinary resale, with a five-year cap from delivery. A dated technical record made while the question is open is the evidence that survives all three deadlines.
Does a valuation at the asking price mean the building is sound?
A valuation matching the asking price confirms the figure is defensible as security, and confirms nothing about authorisation, structure or concealed elements.
The reverse case gets less attention and deserves more.
A valuation that lands on the agreed number tells the buyer that the perito found nothing that moved it. That is a narrower statement than it sounds. The perito was not asked to measure the built footprint against the approved drawings, did not open anything, used no instruments beyond what a value opinion requires, and recorded a conservation state consistent with the price rather than one investigated to its cause.
A valuation on the number is in one sense the least informative outcome of the whole exercise. It removes the accidental signal the process sometimes generates, and it adds no finding in its place. Buyers routinely read it as clearance. Nothing in Lei n.º 153/2015 supports that reading.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Can a buyer see the bank's valuation report in Portugal?
There is no automatic right of access, because the report is produced for the entity that commissioned it. Asking is still worthwhile, and some lending entities share the report or a summary on request. Lei n.º 153/2015 requires the report to describe the property's estado de conservação, so a copy carries information about the building that exists nowhere else in the transaction.
Does a down-valuation mean the property is illegal?
Not on its own. A valuation can come in low because of the recorded condition of the fabric, because the areas on the two property records do not reconcile within the artigo 28.º-A tolerances, or because part of the property carries no municipal authorisation. The three have different remedies and different costs, and the figure alone does not distinguish between them.
Can a down-valuation be used to renegotiate the price?
It can, and it works better once the reason behind it is established. A reduction argued from a figure invites a dispute about the figure. A reduction argued from a measured comparison, a licence number and a costed legalisation route is a different conversation, and it rests on documents the seller can check.
Is the perito avaliador responsible if a valuation misses an unlicensed extension?
Artigo 16.º of Lei n.º 153/2015 makes peritos avaliadores liable for damage caused by errors or omissions in their reports, naming the contracting entity and clientes bancários among those who can suffer it. Whether that reaches a particular buyer is a question for a Portuguese advogado. A valuation is not commissioned to find unauthorised works, so one that does not find them has not necessarily erred.
Conclusion
A down-valuation on a Portuguese property is information about the building that arrived through the financing channel because no other channel was carrying it. Lei n.º 153/2015 put the estado de conservação in the report. Decreto-Lei n.º 10/2024 took the municipal check out of the deed. Between those two facts sits a buyer holding a number and no finding.
Turning the number back into a finding takes a measured comparison of the built property against what was authorised, and a dated record of its condition. An InspectOS Simplex Safe inspection produces both while the price is still open. Set against RJUE exposure reaching €99,759.58 for an individual owner, and against the sinal already committed under artigo 442.º, that is a small line in a purchase.
→ Book a Simplex Safe inspection · get a quote at inspectos.pt/en/home-inspections
Updated September 2026 | Reviewed by the InspectOS engineering team, engineers registered with the Ordem dos Engenheiros | InspectOS Portugal · Legal position verified 17 September 2026
Sources: Lei n.º 153/2015, de 14 de setembro, artigos 1.º, 16.º and 20.º and its annex · Decreto-Lei n.º 10/2024, de 8 de janeiro · Decreto-Lei n.º 108/2026, de 29 de maio · Decreto-Lei n.º 155-B/2026, de 31 de julho · Decreto-Lei n.º 555/99, de 16 de dezembro (RJUE) · Código do Registo Predial, artigo 28.º-A · Código Civil, artigos 342.º, 442.º, 913.º, 916.º and 917.º · Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários · Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira · Instituto dos Registos e do Notariado · INE, Censos 2021 · Ordem dos Engenheiros · Diário da República.